CoronaVirus

Sep 4th, 2023 - A new coronavirus variant, BA.2.86, is raising concern with public health experts, but it's too early to know if this one is any more transmissible than current strains of the virus—or if it will even stick around. But there may be a reason to worry. This variant, which has unofficially been nicknamed "Pirola," a combination of the Greek letters Pi and Rho, has more than 30 mutations to its spike protein compared to XBB.1.5, a variant of omicron that had been the dominant strain in the ... [Read More]

Aug 29th, 2023 - OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada has detected its first case of coronavirus infection from the highly mutated BA.2.86 variant of Omicron in a person in British Columbia who had not traveled outside the Pacific province, health officials said on Tuesday. The individual is not hospitalized, and the detection of BA.2.86 virus has not changed the risk to people in British Columbia, the province's top doctor, Bonnie Henry, and Health Minister Adrian Dix said in a joint statement. "It was not unexpected for ... [Read More]

Aug 24th, 2023 - Scientists led by a team from Duke-NUS Medical School have identified three distinct serotypes of SARS-related coronaviruses, marking the need for vaccines that can provide broad-spectrum protection against them. This discovery, published in the journal hLife , suggests that immunity from vaccination or prior infection by one serotype may be ineffective against another or against new variants. This is because while the viruses of different serotypes can be genetically similar, they function and ... [Read More]

Aug 22nd, 2023 - In the first weeks of 2020, a radiologist at Xinhua Hospital in Wuhan, China, saw looming signs of trouble. He was a native of Wuhan and had 29 years of radiology experience. His job was to take computed tomography (CT) scans, looking at patients' lungs for signs of infection. And infections were everywhere. "I have never seen a virus that spreads so quickly," he told a reporter for the investigative magazine Caixin. "This growth rate is too fast, and it is too scary." "The CT machines in the ... [Read More]

Aug 18th, 2023 - Key takeaways: The vaccines are expected to be available this fall. Moderna this week said preliminary clinical trial data confirmed that its updated COVID-19 vaccine provides a "significant boost" in neutralizing antibodies against emerging SARS-CoV-2 viruses and is expected to effectively target them. "These new results, which show that our updated COVID-19 vaccine generates a robust immune response against the rapidly spreading EG.5 and FL.1.5.1 strains, reflects our updated vaccine's ... [Read More]

Jul 17th, 2023 - Omicron-derived virus variants are currently responsible for most SARS-CoV-2 infections worldwide. Compared to earlier virus variants, omicron rarely causes severe disease. According to current knowledge, a major reason for this is that omicron infects lung cells less efficiently and therefore causes pneumonia less frequently. However, an international team including scientists from the German Primate Center—Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, has now identified a mutation in the ... [Read More]

Jun 25th, 2023 - To date, the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), has claimed more than 6.94 million lives worldwide. Study:  *Important notice: Research Square publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information. Background In contrast to prior ... [Read More]

Jun 14th, 2023 - W ith the summer travel season about to begin, public-health officials face a daunting challenge in keeping on top of ever-evolving COVID-19 variants. Most countries—including the U.S.—have scaled down or eliminated pandemic measures, including pre-flight testing and screening, giving the virus a greater opportunity to slip into countries undetected and start spreading. But even though the U.S. now has less robust COVID-19 data collection, one important but little-known source ... [Read More]

Jun 12th, 2023 - June 12 (Reuters) - COVID-19 vaccines being developed and manufactured for the 2023-2024 campaign should target one of the currently dominant XBB variants, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) staff reviewers said on Monday. The comments were made in documents posted ahead of Thursday's meeting of a panel of FDA's independent experts, who are expected to make recommendations on what strain an updated COVID-19 booster should target. An advisory group to the World Health Organization ... [Read More]

May 11th, 2023 - In a recent study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server, researchers reported that the increased transmissibility of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron variant is not due to its immune evasive abilities alone, but due to alternate mechanisms of cellular entry that allow it to evade the interferon-induced antiviral factors. Study:  Omicron Spike confers enhanced infectivity and interferon resistance to SARS-CoV-2 in human nasal tissue. *Important ... [Read More]

Apr 28th, 2023 - Health authorities say they have been tracking a handful of new SARS-CoV-2 variants climbing in prevalence around the country, including the XBB.1.16 sublineage. That strain has been dubbed by some scientists on social media as "Arcturus," to the frustration of some health officials. Scientists say XBB.1.16 is relatively similar to previous strains that have recently been dominant in the United States, including the XBB.1.5 variant that drove the last wave of infections this past fall and ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2023 - In a recent study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server, researchers developed a novel in vitro model that expresses the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) receptor from seven bar species in a non-permissive avian fibroblast cell line to study the susceptibility to and replication of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).  Study:  *Important notice: bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should ... [Read More]