Virus News and Research

Latest Virus News and Research

A quest to unlock the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2

How the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 made the leap from animals to humans is a puzzle that scientists are trying to solve as humanity comes to grip with the deadly pandemic sweeping the globe.

26 Mar 2020

Anteater-like animals are the missing link for coronavirus transmission between bats and humans

As scientists scramble to learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, two recent studies of the virus' genome reached controversial conclusions: namely, that snakes are intermediate hosts of the new virus, and that a key coronavirus protein shares "uncanny similarities" with an HIV-1 protein.

26 Mar 2020

Berkeley Lights Announces GEPAD to Attack COVID-19 and Other Viruses

Today Berkeley Lights, Inc., announced the GEPAD with the aim to accelerate the discovery of neutralizing antibodies from patient blood samples.

From Bruker Cellular Analysis 26 Mar 2020

Murdoch Children's Research Institute to roll-out clinical trial of BCG vaccine against COVID-19

Professor Kathryn North AC, Director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, has announced its infectious disease researchers are preparing to roll-out a multi-center randomized controlled clinical trial of the BCG vaccine against COVID-19.

26 Mar 2020

Public health officials to Newsom: Lockdown won’t work without enforcement

When Gov. Gavin Newsom last week ordered nearly all 40 million Californians to stay in their homes to combat the spread of COVID-19, he set the tone for the nation, becoming the first to issue a statewide lockdown.

26 Mar 2020

Mologic and partners begin validation process for COVID-19 point-of-need diagnostic test

Mologic Ltd today announced that it has initiated early validation of COVID-19 point-of-need diagnostic tests with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

26 Mar 2020

Could FeNO breath testing provide an early indicator of Covid-19?

As of Tuesday 24th March, the number of global Coronavirus cases rose to 398,834 with 6,650 confirmed cases in the UK alone.

From Bedfont® Scientific Ltd 26 Mar 2020

FDA provides emergency use authorization to PerkinElmer for COVID-19 testing

PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader committed to innovating for a healthier world, announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Company’s New Coronavirus RT-PCR test.

From Revvity 26 Mar 2020

Finding new treatments for muscular dystrophy with CRISPR-Cas9

A new study out of Boston's Children's Hospital has used the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to explore the fatal genetic condition called facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD, one of the family of muscular dystrophies), and to test out the potential utility of various genes involved in this disorder. The research is published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

25 Mar 2020

What happens when COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases mix?

The world has been brought to a stand-still by the COVID-19 pandemic that has affected 197 countries, areas and territories, infected 467,594, and killed 21,181 individuals as of today. COVID-19 disease is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a single-stranded RNA virus, contagious in humans.

25 Mar 2020

Transmission of COVID-19 among cancer patients in China

Researchers from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University in China in collaboration with those from the National Cancer Centre Singapore, have come up with a study that reveals the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 or novel coronavirus among patients with cancer in China.

25 Mar 2020

Coronavirus is not mutating rapidly, hope for vaccine development

Despite the coronavirus infection numbers skyrocketing, there is still good news. A team of scientists found that the novel coronavirus is not mutating significantly, suggesting any vaccine developed to fight SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) would remain effective in the long term.

25 Mar 2020

Critical guidance to identify COVID-19 patients at risk of drug-induced sudden cardiac death

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to spread, leading to more than 20,000 deaths worldwide in less than four months. Efforts are progressing to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, but it's still likely 12 to 18 months away.

25 Mar 2020

Trump’s boast about U.S., South Korea coronavirus testing misses the mark

Boasting about his administration's response to the coronavirus crisis — and arguing the outbreak would soon be under control — President Donald Trump claimed that recent American efforts to test widely for COVID-19 surpass those of other countries.

25 Mar 2020

Finnish researchers come together to study airborne transmission of coronavirus

Aalto University, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the University of Helsinki have brought together a multidisciplinary group of researchers to model how the extremely small droplets that leave the respiratory tract when coughing, sneezing or talking are transported in air currents.

25 Mar 2020

Russian researchers explain why new pathogenic viruses are so hard to detect

In a recently published fundamental review dedicated to the diagnostics of viral infections, a Russian research team featuring MIPT researchers was the first to systematically describe and summarize the cutting-edge technologies in the rapidly developing field of genetics.

25 Mar 2020

California lawmakers struggle to conduct business amid COVID-19 lockdown

The weekend before California shuttered its Capitol building, Senate leader Toni Atkins spent hours on the phone - taking the roles of a student learning from epidemiologists and a legislator discussing with colleagues how the country's most populous state should respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

25 Mar 2020