Orchids and Onions | News, Sports, Jobs – Youngstown Vindicator

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ORCHID: To Canfield City and its police department for paying tribute to this years class of 2020 by placing Canfield Seniors 2020 decals on their cruisers. This is just the police and citys way of saying, Sorry, but we know youre resilient and youre going to kick butt,' said police Chief Chuck Colucci. We couldnt agree more!

ORCHID: To Mercy Health Youngstown for implementing an order this week that every patient leaving a Mercy Health facility be tested for COVID-19 before transfer to a nursing home. Were testing so the nursing home knows the status of that patient before that patient arrives. We felt that was the best way to help the nursing home as our partner in this, Mercy Health Youngstown Clinical Director Dr. James Kravec said. That appears to be a sound practice.

ONION: To the person who used social media to post a vile, racist remark regarding Youngstown fire Chief Barry Finley. Mayor Jamael Tito Brown correctly condemned the post, saying, Where hate is delivered as a siren song for dangerous and destructive behavior, this language cannot go unchallenged. Hate and threats of violence delivered under the mantle of free speech must be addressed. Free speech is one thing, but there is no place in our society for shameful threats and racist remarks.

ORCHID: To the Lowellville Police Department and especially Capt. Stacy Karis for putting together and handing out free activity kits full of toys to Lowellville kids this week. Karis said she came up with the idea to keep kids active, especially when they have to stay home and bunker. Funds came from the Lowellville Police Association, and the kits included things like Frisbees, jump ropes, kites, bubble wands, squirt guns and lots of sidewalk chalk. Great idea!

ORCHID: To Karen Conklin of Liberty, who retired last month from the American Red Cross, where she served as executive director of the Lake to River chapter. A national territorial realignment by the American Red Cross was announced at the same time, making the local Lake to River Chapter now part of American Red Cross of Greater Akron and the Mahoning Valley. She said she believes realigning blood services and humanitarian services will benefit the Red Cross. Conklin, who has served the Valley well in many nonprofit capacities for an incredible 50 years, has earned her retirement.

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Orchids and Onions | News, Sports, Jobs - Youngstown Vindicator

We the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus – The New York Times

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The tension between private liberty and public health in the United States is hardly new. Americans have demanded the latter in times of plague and prioritized the former in times of well-being since at least the Colonial Era. Politicians and business leaders have alternately manipulated and deferred to that tension for about as long.

In 1701, members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony fought a yearlong political battle to enact the nations first quarantine laws against opponents who said such measures were too severe. In 1918, during the flu pandemic, the mayor of Pittsburgh brought a ban on public gatherings to a swift and premature conclusion over concerns about a coming election.

In 2020, the same tension is back with a vengeance. The nation is under siege from the worst pandemic in a century, and the United States is on track to suffer more deaths than any other industrialized country from SARS-CoV-2, the medical name for the novel coronavirus.

Attorney General William Barr last Monday ordered Justice Department lawyers to be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens. He was talking about state and local orders closing businesses and requiring people to shelter in place to help combat the spread of the virus. The Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis, Mr. Barr said in an April 27 memo.

Yet the same Mr. Barr, early in the outbreak, was seemingly so concerned about its impact that he proposed letting the government pause court proceedings and detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies effectively suspending the core constitutional right of habeas corpus.

Temporary limitations on some liberties dont seem to concern most Americans at this moment. Polls show that 70 percent to 90 percent of the public support measures to slow the spread of the virus, even if those measures require temporarily yielding certain freedoms and allowing the economy to suffer in the short run.

Indeed, it is wealthy and powerful conservatives and their allies, including President Trump and Fox News, who are driving the relatively small protests demanding a liberation of the states from oppressive lockdowns as opposed to any overwhelming public sentiment to that effect.

Whats more, every country that has managed to get its Covid-19 outbreak under control has done so with measures far more aggressive than anything tried in the United States so far.

In China, South Korea and Singapore, the authorities quickly established comprehensive testing, along with rigorous contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. In the United States, such efforts are still under construction and are proceeding at a snails pace; three-plus months into the crisis, just a tiny fraction of the needed tests, contact tracers and quarantine facilities are operational anywhere.

Civil liberties may feel to some like a second-order problem when thousands of Americans are dying of a disease with no known treatment or vaccine. Yet while unprecedented emergencies may demand unprecedented responses, those responses can easily tip into misuse and abuse, or can become part of our daily lives even after the immediate threat has passed. For examples, Americans need look no further than the excesses of the post-Sept. 11 Patriot Act.

As the nation starts looking ahead to the next phase of its battle against the coronavirus, we need to have a more honest conversation about the extent to which governments may impose restrictions on their citizens that would not and should not be tolerated under normal conditions.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION

Consider the rights to free speech, association and religious exercise under the First Amendment: These freedoms are central to our self-definition, and yet they have all been infringed on to varying degrees across the country, as states ban gatherings where the virus can spread quickly and easily. In Maryland and Iowa, for example, all types of large events and gatherings, including church services, have been prohibited. (Many other states have exempted religious services from their bans, which raises the separate question of whether the government is impermissibly favoring religion.)

Bans like these are legal, as long as they are neutral and applicable to everyone. A state may not shut down only certain types of events, or prohibit speakers expressing only certain viewpoints. Under Supreme Court precedent, any infringement on speech or religion must be incidental to the central goal of the restriction, which in this case is clear: stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

But even if all these bans are legal on their face, what happens as the 2020 election approaches? Speech and association rights are at their peak in the political context, and Americans will be especially wary of any incursions on those rights in the months or weeks before Election Day. What if a state lifts some restrictions on large gatherings, then reimposes them in the days before an election? That may be necessary if there is another wave of the virus, and yet in a highly polarized political environment, citizens might well distrust official motivations behind a crackdown, and that could generate public unrest.

This is why its so important for the authorities to build that trust now, and to rely openly on scientific consensus when imposing and lifting bans on gatherings and other events.

SURVEILLANCE AND CELLPHONES

Another area of concern is the governments ability to know where we are and whom were with. In normal times, the authorities generally have to obtain a warrant to search your personal property, like a cellphone, or to retrieve its data to find your location.

But giving the government access to all that data carries huge risks. There were already far too many examples of law-enforcement officials abusing their access to cellphone data in the pre-Covid era, taking advantage of revolutions in technology to track people in ways that no one would imaginably consent to. Even if people give their consent to be tracked during the pandemic, governments have a very poor track record of relinquishing new powers once they have them.

The question then becomes: Can cellphone data be used in a way that helps stem the spread of the coronavirus while also being kept out of the hands of the government to avoid abuse, now or down the road?

Apple and Google are in the process of producing an app that would use secret codes to track people through their phones, while leaving the location data on those phones. People who test positive would be given the choice of putting their phone on a list. Other peoples phones could automatically check that list, and if any were within range of the infected person, those people would be notified that they could be at risk.

Fine, in theory. But for a system like this to work, the public needs to buy into it. Enough people have to use these apps to make them effective at least 60 percent of cellphone users, by some estimates and no city or country is anywhere close to that level of adoption. In Norway, only 30 percent of people have downloaded this type of location app.

Another hurdle is that the big technology companies have a poor record of protecting their users private information.

In the end, contact tracing a central feature of any comprehensive public-health response will need to be a cooperative endeavor, involving not only downloadable apps but perhaps hundreds of thousands of human beings, all doing the hard work of direct outreach to find those people at the highest risk of infection.

LIBERATING AMERICA

It would be one thing if the calls to reopen America from President Trump and his allies were part of a coordinated pandemic response strategy by a federal government that had taken strong and science-based measures from the start. But the White House failed to do that at virtually every turn, which makes the current protests ring hollow.

Its possible that at least some of the current lockdowns could have been avoided had the Trump administration led the way back in January when we still had time to take advantage of the information coming out of China and prepare the United States for what lay ahead. In that sense, these devastating shutdowns represent a catastrophic failure of timely government action. Even today, top officials are refusing to take the most basic safety measures. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence toured the Mayo Clinic but refused to follow the clinics requirement to wear a mask. What message does he think that sends to the American people? (On Thursday Mr. Pence visited a plant producing ventilators in his home state, Indiana, and wore a mask.)

In a large self-governing society, civil liberties exist as part of a delicate balance. That balance is being sorely tested right now, and there is often no good solution that does not infringe on at least some liberty. At the same time, the coronavirus provides Americans with an opportunity to reimagine the scope and nature of our civil liberties and our social contract. Yes, Americans are entitled to freedom from government intrusion. But they also have an obligation not to unnecessarily expose their fellow citizens to a deadly pathogen. Protecting Americans from the pandemic while also preserving our economy and our civil liberties is not easy. But its essential.

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We the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus - The New York Times

China Inflicts Ever Tighter Information Controls Over Tibet, Long Off-Limits to Foreign Press – Radio Free Asia

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Chinese authorities in Tibet have further tightened controls over information flows in the region, arresting Tibetans last year for sharing news and opinions on social media and for contacting relatives living in exile, according to rights groups and other experts.

Particular targets of censors and police were images of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama shared on mobile phones and calls for the preservation of the Tibetan language, now under threat from government orders to establish Chinese as the main language of instruction in Tibetan schools.

Cedric AlvianiEast Asia Bureau Chief of Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) told RFAs Tibetan Service that freedom of expression in Tibetan areas of China, already heavily restricted, has not improved due to the censorship and surveillance set up by the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party.

It is still extremely difficult and dangerous for Tibetans to investigate and smuggle information outside Tibet, he said, adding that Beijings refusal to allow foreign journalists free access to Tibet has made it even harder for the outside world to assess conditions there.

RSF ranked China 177th out of 180 countries in an annual global press freedom index earlier this month.

Its much more dangerous [for Tibetans] to speak to foreign journalists or to overseas media like Radio Free Asia than it is for other Chinese people, said Sarah Cook, Senior Research Analyst for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan for Freedom House.

People there are subject to heavier reprisals than in other parts of China, Cook said.

Increasingly tight curbs

International press freedom groups have highlighted Chinas increasingly tight curbs on media workers across the country ahead of World Press Freedom Day Sunday.

Some of those sentenced to long prison terms last year in Tibetan areas had sought to draw attention to corrupt officials or environmental concerns, while others had simply voiced support for use of the Tibetan language or had shared images of the Dalai Lama, regarded by Chinese leaders as a dangerous separatist.

On Dec. 6, 2019, Anya Sengdra, a resident of Kyangche township in Qinghais Gade (in Chinese, Gande) county, was given a seven-year term after being arrested on charges of disturbing social order after he complained online about corrupt officials, illegal mining, and the hunting of protected wildlife.

Meanwhile, Sonam Palden, a 22-year-old Tibetan monk, disappeared after being arrested on Sept. 19 in Sichuans Ngaba (Aba) county after posting online comments criticizing Beijings policies in the region, and a Tibetan man named Lhadar, 36, was detained in October in Tibets Nagchu (Naqu) county and also vanished in custody.

It is assumed he was arrested for leaking state secrets, a local source told RFA in an earlier report, citing a charge often used to stop the spread of news of protests against Beijings rule in Tibetan areas or other information considered politically sensitive by authorities.

And on Feb. 20, 2019, Tsering Dorje, a 45-year-old resident of Peleb village in the Tashi Dzom township of Shigatses Dingri (Tingri) county in Tibet, was taken into custody only hours after speaking with his brother in exile about the importance of teaching the Tibetan language to their children.

'Suspicious conversations'

In the free world, people exchange information [like this] on a routine daily basis, Karma ChoyingSecretary to the International Relations Department of Tibets India-based exile government, the Central Tibetan Administrationtold RFA in a recent interview.

[But] these types of conversations are observed suspiciously by the Chinese government, he said.

Chinas restrictions on free speech and the sharing of information in Tibet violate Chinas own laws, said James Tager, Director for Free Expression Research and Policy for the writers group PEN America.

We should recall that Chinas own constitutional system guarantees freedom of speech and the press, and that the Constitution as well as the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law contains significant protections for the rights of ethnic minorities within China, Tager said.

So when the international community asks the Chinese government to guarantee press freedom and free speech, including for those who speak or write or report in the Tibetan language and on Tibetan concerns, we are not making a radical demand, he said.

Instead, we are holding the Chinese government to its own words.

Reported by RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tashi Wangchuk. Written in English by Richard Finney.

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China Inflicts Ever Tighter Information Controls Over Tibet, Long Off-Limits to Foreign Press - Radio Free Asia

As Congress talks about Press Freedom, here is the partys track record, and its just an indicative list – OpIndia

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From threatening the press during Nehrus rule and co-oping it during the times of Indira Gandhi to intimidating and bullying in the present Sonia Gandhis era the Congress party, the epitome of liberal values of India, has come one full circle.

On the occasion of Press Freedom Day, the Congress party, ironically, took to social media to blame BJP claiming that it stiffed free voice on the country. To all the journalists we would say, Daro Mat, the Congress tweeted.

The Congress party lamenting over lack of freedom for the press to express their opinion in the country is just paradoxical. The audacity of the Congress party to take up the cause for press freedom at a time when the party itself is hounding journalists for speaking against them comes as a shocker.

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Since the times of Jawaharlal Nehru to the present Sonia Gandhis era, the Congress party has been highly intolerant when it comes to accepting criticism from the press. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has left no room for dissent and has acted strictly against the press whenever they have raised fingers against their misdeeds.

Here is a list of violation of press freedom committed by the Congress party:

The chain of dictatorial tendencieswhich started ever since Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of the country has continued to flourish in the partys genes even after seven decades. Perhaps, the time has come for people to realize that the Congress party being some apostle of free speech is an overstatement, if not pure propaganda.

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As Congress talks about Press Freedom, here is the partys track record, and its just an indicative list - OpIndia

Robin Thicke’s Fiancee Goes Off on Huntington Beach Protestors – TMZ

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April Love Geary is ashamed to be from Huntington Beach because of all the "white privilege" punks, as she put it, protesting SoCal beach closures.

Robin Thicke's fiancee went off Friday on the protesters, calling them out for their utter disregard of people's health during this coronavirus pandemic. She said "it's the most white privilege bulls**t" thing she's seen.

Check out the video ... April says it's ridiculous that Black Lives Matter protesters across the country have been met by cops in riot gear, while Huntington Beach protesters -- with much less melanin -- are allowed to exercise their right to free speech. All while cops stand idly by without riot gear.

She urges protesters to keep their asses at home, and adds, "It's not that hard."

The demonstrations started after California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of all Orange County beaches, starting this weekend. Some protesters carried signs that read, "Masks don't work. My body, my choice."

As we reported ... heavily-armed protesters stormed Michigan's statehouse after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extended the state's emergency stay-at-home order until the end of May.

No one's armed in the OC, but April's still super pissed.

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Robin Thicke's Fiancee Goes Off on Huntington Beach Protestors - TMZ

Invisible and unheard – The News International

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Ominous times, these are. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of what is happening to this country and to us, as individuals. Yes, this dark mood is dictated by the exigencies and uncertainties of Covid-19. But there has also been a particular onslaught this week of pain and distress that affects our mood and our capacity to stay calm. Is it something in our stars?

That I am a journalist certainly does not help. There is this professional obligation to keep abreast of all the major events and developments that lurk just beneath the surface. This means that I do not have the option to shut out the world and its obtrusive vulgarities.

Ah, but there is a catch here. I am not able to write all that I know, see, feel or think. Ironically, it is so in a world of media epidemic of its kind where they wear masks and creep in shadows. Against this backdrop, suppression of the professional and independent media is bound to promote national incoherence and ideological deception.

Now, there is more than one reason why I am distracted, in the midst of the pandemic, to talk about the media. In the first place, today Sunday, May 3 is the World Press Freedom Day. May 3 was so declared by the UN General Assembly and the idea was to raise awareness of the importance of the freedom of the press.

Over the years, the free media has suffered so much at the hands of authoritarian regimes that this Day is not at all a celebration and the ceremonies are becoming more elegiac. This years theme is: Media for Democracy: Journalists and Elections in Times of Disinformation. Its concept note acknowledges that today, the contribution of free, pluralistic, independent and safe journalism is under unprecedented stress.

For us, in Pakistan, there is this deepening anguish about the continued detention of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, editor-in-chief of Jang and Geo Group. What this means has become very evident. Jang/Geo is the largest media group in the country by a wide margin and its struggle for freedom and technological as well as editorial innovation is universally recognised. But what is at stake here is more than one media groups independence. Essentially, it is an attack on the democratic evolution of Pakistan and its national sense of direction.

Then, there is this mysterious report about veteran journalist Sajid Hussain, who had also worked in this newspaper. He was missing from the Swedish city of Uppsala since March 2, where he was given political asylum. It is now confirmed that his body was discovered from a river.

In addition, I would like to mention the launch on Thursday of the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), with specific reference to its chapter on Freedom of Expression. HRCPs annual reports on the state of human rights in Pakistan are universally cited as a very credible document. It is also very extensive, covering almost all the areas that relate to human rights.

With reference to curbs on free speech, HRCP Secretary General Harris Khalique said: The last year will be remembered for systemic curbs on political dissent, chokehold on press freedom and grievous neglect of economic and social rights.

Numerous journalists reported that it had become even more difficult to criticise state policy. Zohra Yusuf, former HRCP chairperson, said that this, coupled with the erosion of social media spaces and a deliberate financial squeeze on the media, had led to Pakistans position slipping on the World Press Freedom Index.

Warning that the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic will worsen the human rights record of the country, HRCP spokesperson I A Rehman said that 2019 was the year of widespread social and economic marginalisation that left the weakest segment of society invisible and unheard.

At this point, I would like to shift to a rather enigmatic statement made by Prime Minister Imran Khan about how the elite had readily imposed a lockdown to deal with the pandemic without thinking of the poor. We are familiar with the prime ministers lockdown dilemma. His concern that a strict lockdown will deeply hurt the poor and the daily wage earners is surely valid.

However, his assertion that the elite had made the lockdown decision to subvert the interests of the poor raises a number of questions. Isnt he himself at the helm? How could the elite overrule him? And if they did, how would he deal with them to defend the rights of the poor and the underprivileged?

If the deprivations of the poor are meant to drive the social and economic policies of this government, the HRCP report is a certification of the state of the weakest segment of the society during 2019, when the present government was in power. Imran Khan had made some other remarks during his speech at COMSTECH headquarters in Islamabad about the development priorities of the previous governments and the division of the national resources. Will Pakistan now be a welfare and not a national security state?

To be fair to Imran Khan, questions about the power of the elite the ruling elite? need to be seriously explored. One wonders if he has ever given much thought to the vested interests of the individuals he has gathered in his large cabinet. Actually, it is as good a representation of the elite of this country as you can draw together.

Besides, if the intention is to empower the poor and to respect their human dignity, the entire system will have to be made more equitable. To understand this challenge, a beginning can be made with a careful study of the HRCP report and a tutorial may be held for the cabinet, with someone like I A Rehman as the tutor.

To conclude, let me quote Dom Helder Camara, who was Brazils Catholic Archbishop and was known as an advocate of liberation theology. He said: When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: [emailprotected]

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Invisible and unheard - The News International

What Do Your Genetics Have to Do With Your Chances of Dying From Coronavirus? – Vanity Fair

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Six weeks ago, with little fanfare, a network of geneticists launched an obscure but potentially game-changing initiative. Their aim: to learn why people with particular DNA profiles end up dying from the coronavirusor completely avoiding its effects. Ultimately, they want to devise ways for scientists to cook up new therapies that might alter how our nanosize genes operate as a way of reversing or accelerating the pathogens progress. Called the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, the project now involves close to 700 scientists and researchers, worldwide, who are busily comparing DNA data from pandemic victims to literally millions of existing DNA profiles of millions of people.

To appreciate how our genes might be impacted by the onslaught of COVID-19, imagine this: that a tiny, invisible bug is hovering over the surface of a cell inside your bodysay a lung cell. You dont know it yet, but youve just been infected with SARS-Cov-2. Maybe it came from that jogger who whizzed past you on the sidewalk, or that tabletop you touched before rubbing your eyes. Whatever its source, there it is, circulating inside you: a fuzzy, sphere-shaped pathogen thats less than 1/1000 the width of a human hair. Prickly, with spikes on its outside, its searching for a place to plug into and enter your cell. Its a little like a key and a lock, where the key (the virus) wants to slip into the keyhole (a receptor on the cell) and then release a payload that will be up to no good.

Except that, in some people, the virus-key doesnt fit the lock and is blocked from entering the cell. In others, it slips right in, leading to illness and sometimes to rapid deterioration and even death. One potential differencesay geneticists who are working day and night to better understand how SARS-Cov-2 invades and attacks our cellsmight be because your DNA code differs from mine. Yours might inherently spurn the virus at the cellular level; mine might make me more susceptible.

So what determines who gets dangerously sick? We know that people who are older and have underlying diseases like diabetes and heart disease are at higher risk for having a bad response to COVID-19, explained Mark Daly, a 52-year-old geneticist and the director of the Institute for Molecular Medicine in Helsinki, Finland. Other factors include higher risk biases that involve ethnicity, class, vocation, geographic location, and the medical resources available at the time of treatment. And yet, according to Daly, this doesnt explain why relatively healthy people, including young people, are sometimes having severe and life-threatening reactions such as very high fevers, pneumonia, and difficulty with breathing that requires oxygen and sometimes a ventilator. Most likely this has something to do with differences in their genes.

Daly should know. With his Paul Reverelike ponytail, circular hippie glasses, and lean, determined face, hes a pioneer of modern genetics who was a key player during and after the Human Genome Project, the huge international effort in the 1990s and early 2000s that sequenced the first-ever human genome. And as the pandemic has been raging, Daly, a physicist, decided to help spearhead a remarkable hive-mind effort: the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative.

The project was announced on March 16 in a tweet posted by Dalys cohort Andrea Ganna: Goal: aggregate genetic and clinical information on individuals affected by COVID-19. The response was immediate. Within days, scientists from over 150 organizations in more than 30 countries on six continents agreed to join. Thats the ideal use of the hive mind: a conglomeration of big brains and, in this case, their disparate data sources, to solve one huge problem. Participants have come not only from Harvard and MIT (institutions with which Daly has ongoing affiliations) and the usual institutional suspects in North America, Europe, and the wealthier Asian countries, but also from the Qatar Genome Program, Vietnams SARS-Cov-2 Susceptibility Program, and CLHORAZbased in Burkina Faso.

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What Do Your Genetics Have to Do With Your Chances of Dying From Coronavirus? - Vanity Fair

Scientists Find New Way to Inject Plants With Medicine, And It May Help Save Our Crops – ScienceAlert

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You may not think of plants as needing life-saving medicine, but that's sometimes the case when bugs and disease strike. Now, scientists have developed a super-accurate, highly delicate way of delivering drugs, and right where plants need them.

At the moment, plants can be sprayed with pesticides, which doesn't really penetrate to the roots, or they can be treated with large needles that aren't particularly precise, and tend to cause damage to the plants.

The new method makes use of microneedles or what the researchers are calling 'phytoinjectors', sitting on top of a silk-based biomaterial patch, which are able to hit a plant's circulatory system directly. Pesticides, in contrast, might travel between the root system and the leaves.

(Cao et al., Advanced Science, 2020)

As well as delivering medicine or nutrients to different parts of the plant, the new mechanism could also be used to take samples of a plant, which are then transferred to a lab for analysis, or even to edit DNA (something the team has successfully tried).

"We wanted to solve the technical problem of how you can have a precise access to the plant vasculature," says mechanical engineer Yunteng Caofrom MIT.

"You can think about delivering micronutrients, or you can think about delivering genes, to change the gene expression of the plant or to basically engineer a plant."

The motivation for the project came from the spread of the citrus greening disease across the US and other parts of the world, which threatens to flatten an industry worth $9 billion if a solution isn't found. Olives and bananas are other fruits under particular threat from disease across the world right now.

Previous work looking at the use of microneedles to deliver human vaccines was used as a starting point, with silk kept as the basis of the material holding the microneedles.

Silk is strong, doesn't cause a reaction in plants, and can be made degradable enough to get out of the way once the drugs have been delivered.

However, a lot also had to change compared to microneedles used on humans: plants have far less water available than the human body does, so the design had to be adapted.

The team of scientists was able to boost the silk's hydrophilicity (water-attracting capabilities), and come up with a new material more suited for plants.

"We found that adaptations of a material designed for drug delivery in humans to plants was not straightforward, due to differences not only in tissue vasculature, but also in fluid composition," says biologist Eugene Lim.

Tests of the material and its microneedled payload on tomato and tobacco plants showed that it could be successful as a drug delivery system. Fluorescent molecules were used to track the progress of the injection all the way from the roots to the leaves.

The system should adapt to other plants fairly easily, the researchers say, though scaling it up is going to prove more challenging. The work should prove useful for future projects though, both in delivering life-saving drugs to save plants from disease, and in engineering them to avoid disease in the first place.

"For the future, our research interests will go beyond antibiotic delivery to genetic engineering and point-of-care diagnostics based on metabolite sampling," says environmental engineer Benedetto Marelli.

The research has been published in Advanced Science.

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Scientists Find New Way to Inject Plants With Medicine, And It May Help Save Our Crops - ScienceAlert

Evanston hospitals expand to antibody testing – The Daily Northwestern

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Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune

Drive-through COVID-19 testing is conducted in a parking lot in Chicago. Antibody tests will soon be available at Evanston hospitals, where thousands of tests for COVID-19 have already been administered.

Over 2,000 COVID-19 tests have been administered to Evanston residents, according to Mayor Steve Hagerty. Now, local health systems are expanding capabilities to include antibody testing

AMITA Health hopes to have the tests available within the next week or two, while NorthShore University HealthSystem is planning on rolling out the first phases of its antibody testing this week. The tests can determine if a person has previously been infected with the virus, and may be able to say if a person is immune to COVID-19.

NorthShore has been carefully evaluating several antibody tests for the past few weeks; and performance has been quite variable, NorthShore senior director of public relations Jim Anthony told The Daily in an email. We are going live this week with one manual test that we have confidence in.

NorthShore plans to have additional automated antibody testing available in two to three weeks, according to Anthony.

Antibody tests are also useful for community-based research, according to Elizabeth McNally, the director of the Feinberg Center for Genetic Medicine. Public health officials use test results to help determine infection rates across a population. Additionally, McNally said that antibody tests are much less complex than COVID-19 tests.

The good thing about antibody testing is its actually really easy to do, so its a lot easier to roll that out and do on a population level than virus testing, McNally said.

As of Monday, of the 2,002 COVID-19 tests administered in Evanston, 16 percent have come back positive.

On a day-to-day basis, the NorthShore health system has the capacity to test 1,200 patients per day for COVID-19, a figure that has nearly tripled since the health system first began in-house testing last month.

NorthShore alone has accounted for 13 percent of all COVID-19 testing in Illinois. Since the start of the pandemic, the health system has administered 27,000 tests, Anthony said.

At AMITA Health Saint Francis Hospital, COVID-19 testing is reserved for current patients or those showing COVID-19 symptoms.

Olga Solares, AMITA Health associate vice president of communications and media relations, said St. Francis Hospital has limited testing processing capabilities at this time.

Solares emphasized that St. Francis is not offering community or general public testing and that there was no exact time frame for when testing capabilities will be expanded.

Meanwhile, smaller operations, like Howard Brown Healths Clark clinic, are offering testing to the public at no charge.

Howard Brown Health has instituted community care stations outside many of its clinics, including the Clark clinic, which is open Monday through Friday. Patients at these stations can speak to medical providers about their symptoms at no charge. If a COVID-19 test is determined to be needed, the test will also be free.

Erik Roldan, Howard Brown Health director of communications, said appointments are not required, but he recommends anyone seeking care call before visiting a care station.

As of Monday, the Clark location had administered 112 COVID-19 tests, of which 22 had positive results. At this time, Roldan said Howard Brown Health has no plans to also implement antibody testing.

Although they have never run out of COVID-19 tests or the necessary equipment, the fluctuating supply of personal protective equipment has been cause for concern for clinics, Roldan said.

Email: jasonbeeferman@u.northwestern.eduTwitter: @jasonbeeferman

Related stories: With no playbook and a finite supply, Evanston health workers must gear up for the long haul Inside the process of COVID-19 testing in Evanston

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Evanston hospitals expand to antibody testing - The Daily Northwestern

Sarepta Therapeutics Announces Research Agreement with US Department of Defense to Evaluate Multiple Constructs From its Proprietary RNA Platform as…

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc.. (NASDAQ:SRPT), the leader in precision genetic medicine for rare diseases, today announced that the Company and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the Department of Defenses lead laboratory for medical biological defense research, have entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). The purpose of the CRADA is to jointly identify antisense oligonucleotides using Sareptas proprietary phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer (PMO) platform with activity against SARS-CoV-2 for the potential treatment of COVID-19.

Previously published clinical and preclinical studies of Sareptas RNA technology have found evidence of antiviral activity of Sareptas PMO technology in coronaviruses and other viruses.i,ii,iii, iv Pursuant to the CRADA, Sarepta will design, synthesize, manufacture and provide to USAMRIID multiple peptide-conjugated PMO (PPMO) constructs based on genetic sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 for COVID-19. USAMRIID will evaluate the constructs on characterized wild-type SARS-CoV-2 viruses for their potential to inhibit viral infection. Based on the results, Sarepta and USAMRIID will consider collaborative funding proposals to advance the development of treatments for COVID-19.

We should all be proud and grateful that in collaboration with health agencies, many innovative companies across the biopharmaceutical ecosystem have mobilized to fight and solve this COVID-19 pandemic, investing significant resources to rapidly build diagnostics, find treatments, and develop effective vaccines, said Doug Ingram, Sareptas President and Chief Executive Officer. While Sareptas mission to rapidly advance treatments for rare and often fatal genetic disease is focused, unwavering and undeterred, we cannot ignore the impact of this global pandemic on human health, and have answered the call to contribute our scientific expertise and provide our technology in the race to develop an effective treatment for COVID-19. Indeed, we have already built and manufactured therapeutic PPMO constructs and are providing them now to USAMRIID for testing and evaluation.

About the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious DiseasesFor over 50 years, USAMRIID has provided leading edge medical capabilities to deter and defend against current and emerging biological threat agents. The Institute is the only laboratory in the Department of Defense equipped to safely study highly hazardous viruses requiring maximum containment at Biosafety Level 4. Research conducted at USAMRIID leads to medical solutionsvaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and training programsthat benefit both military personnel and civilians. Established in 1969, the Institute plays a key role as the lead military medical research laboratory for the Defense Threat Reduction Agencys Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense. USAMRIID is a subordinate laboratory of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. For more information, visit http://www.usamriid.army.mil

AboutSarepta TherapeuticsAt Sarepta, we are leading a revolution in precision genetic medicine and every day is an opportunity to change the lives of people living with rare disease. The Company has built an impressive position in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and in gene therapies for limb-girdle muscular dystrophies (LGMDs), mucopolysaccharidosis type IIIA, Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), and other CNS-related disorders, with more than 40 programs in various stages of development. The Companys programs and research focus span several therapeutic modalities, including RNA, gene therapy and gene editing. For more information, please visitwww.sarepta.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Sarepta Forward-Looking StatementThis press release contains forward-looking statements. Any statements contained in this press release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," "intends," "potential," "possible" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include statements regarding the purpose of the CRADA to jointly identify antisense oligonucleotides using Sareptas PMO platform with activity against SARS-CoV-2; the parties commitments under the CRADA; Sarepta and USAMRIIDs plan, subject to an evaluation of the constructs, to consider collaborative funding proposals to advance the development of treatments for COVID-19; the potential of the collaboration between Sarepta and USAMRIID to develop a treatment for COVID-19; and Sareptas mission to rapidly advance treatments for rare and often fatal genetic disease.

These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Sareptas control. Known risk factors include, among others: the expected benefits and opportunities related to the CRADA may not be realized or may take longer to realize than expected due to challenges and uncertainties inherent in product research and development; in particular, the collaboration may not result in any viable treatments suitable for commercialization due to a variety of reasons, including any inability of the parties to perform their commitments and obligations under the agreement, the results of research may not be consistent with past results or may not be positive or may otherwise fail to meet regulatory approval requirements for the safety and efficacy of product candidates, possible limitations of company financial and other resources, manufacturing limitations that may not be anticipated or resolved for in a timely manner, and regulatory, court or agency decisions, such as decisions by the United States Patent and Trademark Office with respect to patents that cover Sareptas product candidates; and those risks identified under the heading Risk Factors in Sareptas most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 and most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as other SEC filings made by the Company which you are encouraged to review.

Any of the foregoing risks could materially and adversely affect the Companys business, results of operations and the trading price of Sareptas common stock. For a detailed description of risks and uncertainties Sarepta faces, you are encouraged to review Sarepta's 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K and most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as other SEC filings made by Sarepta. We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Sarepta does not undertake any obligation to publicly update its forward-looking statements based on events or circumstances after the date hereof.

Internet Posting of InformationWe routinely post information that may be important to investors in the 'For Investors' section of our website atwww.sarepta.com. We encourage investors and potential investors to consult our website regularly for important information about us.

Source: Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc.

Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc.

Investors:Ian Estepan, 617-274-4052iestepan@sarepta.com

Media:Tracy Sorrentino, 617-301-8566tsorrentino@sarepta.com

i NeumanBW, et al. J Virol.2004Jun;78(11):5891-9. Antisense morpholino-oligomers directed against the 5' endofthe genome inhibit coronavirus proliferation and growth.

ii Burrer R, et al. J Virol.2007 Jun;81(11):5637-48. Antiviral effectsofantisensemorpholinooligomers in murine coronavirus infection models.

iii NeumanBW, et al. J Virol.2005 Aug;79(15):9665-76. Inhibition, escape, and attenuated growthofsevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus treated withantisensemorpholinooligomers.

iv HealdAE, et al. AntimicrobAgentsChemother.2014 Nov;58(11):6639-47. Safety and Pharmacokinetic Profiles of Phosphorodiamidate Morpholino Oligomers with Activity Against Ebola Virus and Marburg Virus: Results of Two Single-Ascending-Dose Studies.

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Sarepta Therapeutics Announces Research Agreement with US Department of Defense to Evaluate Multiple Constructs From its Proprietary RNA Platform as...

Profits and Pride at Stake, the Race for a Vaccine Intensifies – The New York Times

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WASHINGTON Four months after a mysterious new virus began its deadly march around the globe, the search for a vaccine has taken on an intensity never before seen in medical research, with huge implications for public health, the world economy and politics.

Seven of the roughly 90 projects being pursued by governments, pharmaceutical makers, biotech innovators and academic laboratories have reached the stage of clinical trials. With political leaders not least President Trump increasingly pressing for progress, and with big potential profits at stake for the industry, drug makers and researchers have signaled that they are moving ahead at unheard-of speeds.

But the whole enterprise remains dogged by uncertainty about whether any coronavirus vaccine will prove effective, how fast it could be made available to millions or billions of people and whether the rush compressing a process that can take 10 years into 10 months will sacrifice safety.

Some experts say the more immediately promising field might be the development of treatments to speed recovery from Covid-19, an approach that has generated some optimism in the last week through initially encouraging research results on remdesivir, an antiviral drug previously tried in fighting Ebola.

In an era of intense nationalism, the geopolitics of the vaccine race are growing as complex as the medicine. The months of mutual vilification between the United States and China over the origins of the virus have poisoned most efforts at cooperation between them. The U.S. government is already warning that American innovations must be protected from theft chiefly from Beijing.

Biomedical research has long been a focus of theft, especially by the Chinese government, and vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus are todays holy grail, John C. Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security, said on Friday. Putting aside the commercial value, there would be great geopolitical significance to being the first to develop a treatment or vaccine. We will use all the tools we have to safeguard American research.

The intensity of the global research effort is such that governments and companies are building production lines before they have anything to produce.

We are going to start ramping up production with the companies involved, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the federal governments top expert on infectious diseases, said on NBC this week. You dont wait until you get an answer before you start manufacturing.

Two of the leading entrants in the United States, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, have announced partnerships with manufacturing firms, with Johnson & Johnson promising a billion doses of an as-yet-undeveloped vaccine by the end of next year.

Not to be left behind, the Britain-based pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said this week that it was working with a vaccine development project at the University of Oxford to manufacture tens of millions of doses by the end of this year.

With the demand for a vaccine so intense, there are escalating calls for human-challenge trials to speed the process: tests in which volunteers are injected with a potential vaccine and then deliberately exposed to the coronavirus.

Because the approach involves exposing participants to a potentially deadly disease, challenge trials are ethically fraught. But they could be faster than simply inoculating human subjects and waiting for them to be exposed along with everyone else, especially as the pandemic is brought under control in big countries.

Even when promising solutions are found, there are big challenges to scaling up production and distribution. Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, whose foundation is spending $250 million to help spur vaccine development, has warned about a critical shortage of a mundane but vital component: medical glass.

Without sufficient supplies of the glass, there will be too few vials to transport the billions of doses that will ultimately be needed.

The scale of the problem and the demand for a quick solution are bound to create tensions between the profit motives of the pharmaceutical industry, which typically fights hard to wring the most out of their investments in new drugs, and the publics need for quick action to get any effective vaccines to as many people as possible.

So far, much of the research and development has been supported by governments and foundations. And much remains to be worked out when it comes to patents and what national governments will claim in return for their support and pledges of quick regulatory approval.

Given the stakes, it is no surprise that while scientists and doctors talk about finding a global vaccine, national leaders emphasize immunizing their own populations first. Mr. Trump said he was personally in charge of Operation Warp Speed to get 300 million doses into American arms by January.

Already, the administration has identified 14 vaccine projects it intends to focus on, a senior administration official said, with the idea of further narrowing the group to a handful that could go on, with government financial help and accelerated regulatory review, to meet Mr. Trumps goal. The winnowing of the projects to 14 was reported Friday by NBC News.

But other countries are also signaling their intention to nationalize their approaches. The most promising clinical trial in China is financed by the government. And in India, the chief executive of the Serum Institute of India the worlds largest producer of vaccine doses said that most of its vaccine would have to go to our countrymen before it goes abroad.

George Q. Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, said thinking in country-by-country rather than global terms would be foolhardy since it would involve squandering the early doses of vaccine on a large number of individuals at low risk, rather than covering as many high-risk individuals globally health care workers and older adults to stop the spread around the world.

Given the proliferation of vaccine projects, the best outcome may be none of them emerging as a clear winner.

Lets say we get one vaccine quickly but we can only get two million doses of it at the end of next year, said Anita Zaidi, who directs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations vaccine development program. And another vaccine, just as effective, comes three months later but we can make a billion doses. Who won that race?

The answer, she said, is we will need many different vaccines to cross the finish line.

At 1 a.m. on March 21, 1963, a 5-year-old girl named Jeryl Lynn Hilleman woke up her father. She had come down with the mumps, which had made her miserable with a swollen jaw.

It just so happened that her father, Maurice, was a vaccine designer. So he told Jeryl Lynn to go back to bed, drove to his lab at Merck to pick up some equipment, and returned to swab her throat. Dr. Hilleman refrigerated her sample back at his lab and soon got to work weakening her viruses until they could serve as a mumps vaccine. In 1967, it was approved by the F.D.A.

To vaccine makers, this story is the stuff of legend. Dr. Hilleman still holds the record for the quickest delivery of a vaccine from the lab to the clinic. Vaccines typically take ten to fifteen years of research and testing. And only six percent of the projects that scientists launch reach the finish line.

For a world in the grips of Covid-19, on the other hand, this story is the stuff of nightmares. No one wants to wait four years for a vaccine, while millions die and economies remain paralyzed.

Some of the leading contenders for a coronavirus vaccine are now promising to have the first batches ready in record time, by the start of next year. They have accelerated their schedules by collapsing the standard vaccine timeline.

They are combining trials that used to be carried out one after the other. They are pushing their formulations into production, despite the risk that the trials will fail, leaving them with millions of useless doses.

But some experts want to do even more to speed up the conveyor belt. Writing last month in the journal Vaccines, the vaccine developer Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin and Dr. Arthur L. Caplan, a bioethicist at NYU Langone Medical Center, proposed infecting vaccinated volunteers with the coronavirus the method known as challenge trials. The procedure might cut months or years off the development but would put test subjects at risk.

Challenge trials were used in the early days of vaccine research but now are carried out under strict conditions and only for illnesses, like flu and malaria, that have established treatments.

In an article in March in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, a team of researchers wrote, Such an approach is not without risks, but every week that vaccine rollout is delayed will be accompanied by many thousands of deaths globally.

Dr. Caplan said that limiting the trials to healthy young adults could reduce the risk, since they were less likely to suffer serious complications from Covid-19. I think we can let people make the choice and I have no doubt many would, he said.

In Congress, Representative Bill Foster, Democrat of Illinois and a physicist, and Representative Donna E. Shalala, Democrat of Florida and the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, organized a bipartisan group of 35 lawmakers to sign a letter asking regulators to approve such trials.

The organizers of a website set up to promote the idea, 1daysooner.org, say they have signed up more than 9,100 potential volunteers from 52 countries.

Some scientists caution that truly informed consent, even by willing volunteers, may not be possible. Even medical experts do not yet know all the effects of the virus. Those who have appeared to recover might still face future problems.

Even without challenge trials, accelerated testing may run the risk of missing potential side effects. A vaccine for dengue fever, and one for SARS that never reached the market, were abandoned after making some people more susceptible to severe forms of the diseases, not less.

It will be extremely important to determine that does not happen, said Michel De Wilde, a former senior vice president of research and development at Sanofi Pasteur, a vaccine maker in France.

When it comes to the risks from flawed vaccines, Chinas history is instructive.

The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products was involved in a 2018 scandal in which ineffective vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and other conditions were injected into hundreds of thousands of babies.

The government confiscated the Wuhan institutes illegal income, fined the company, and punished nine executives. But the company was allowed to continue to operate. It is now running a coronavirus vaccine project, and along with two other Chinese groups has been allowed to combine its safety and efficacy trials.

Several Chinese scientists questioned the decision, arguing that the vaccine should be shown to be safe before testing how well it works.

Nationalism Versus Globalism

In the early days of the crisis, Harvard was approached by the Chinese billionaire Hui Ka Yan. He arranged to give roughly $115 million to be split between Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals and the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases for a collaborative effort that would include developing coronavirus vaccines.

We are not racing against each other, we are racing the virus, said Dr. Dan Barouch, the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School who is also working with Johnson & Johnson. What we need is a global vaccine because an outbreak in one part of the world puts the rest of the world at risk.

That all-for-one sentiment has become a mantra among many researchers, but it is hardly universally shared.

In India, the Serum Institute the heavyweight champion of vaccine manufacturing, producing 1.5 billion doses a year has signed agreements in recent weeks with the developers of four promising potential vaccines. But in an interview with Reuters, Adar Poonawalla, the companys billionaire chief executive, made it clear that at least initially any vaccine the company produces would have to go to Indias 1.3 billion people.

The tension between those who believe a vaccine should go where it is needed most and those dealing with pressures to supply their own country first is one of the defining features of the global response.

The Trump administration, which in March put out feelers to a German biotech company to acquire its vaccine research or move it to American shores, has awarded grants of nearly half a billion dollars each to two U.S.-based companies, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.

Johnson & Johnson, though based in New Jersey, conducts its research in the Netherlands.

Paul Stoffels, the companys vice chairman and chief scientific officer, said in an interview that the Department of Health and Human Services understood we cant pick up our research and move it to the United States. But it made sure that the company joined a partnership with Emergent BioSolutions a Maryland biological production firm to produce the first big batches of any approved vaccine for the United States.

The political reality is that it would be very, very hard for any government to allow a vaccine made in their own country to be exported while there was a major problem at home, said Sandy Douglas, a researcher at the University of Oxford. The only solution is to make a hell of a lot of vaccine in a lot of different places.

The Oxford vaccine team has already begun scaling up plans for manufacturing by half a dozen companies across the world, including China and India, plus two British manufacturers and the British-based multinational AstraZeneca.

In China, the governments instinct is to showcase the countrys growth into a technological power capable of beating the United States. There are nine Chinese Covid-19 vaccines in development, involving 1,000 scientists and the Chinese military.

Chinas Center for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that one of the vaccines could be in emergency use by September, meaning that in the midst of the presidential election in the United States, Mr. Trump might see television footage of Chinese citizens lining up for injections.

Its a scenario we have thought about, one member of Mr. Trumps coronavirus task force said. No one wants to be around that day.

Traditional Versus New Methods

The more than 90 different vaccines under development work in radically different ways. Some are based on designs used for generations. Others use genetic-based strategies that are so new they have yet to lead to an approved vaccine.

I think in this case its very wise to have different platforms being tried out, Dr. De Wilde said.

The traditional approach is to make vaccines from viruses.

When our bodies encounter a new virus, they start learning how to make effective antibodies against it. But they are in a race against the virus as it multiplies. Sometimes they produce effective antibodies quickly enough to wipe out an infection. But sometimes the virus wins.

Vaccines give the immune system a head start. They teach it to make antibodies in advance of an infection.

The first vaccines, against diseases like rabies, were made from viruses. Scientists weakened the viruses so that they could no longer make people sick.

A number of groups are weakening the coronavirus to produce a vaccine against Covid-19. In April, the Chinese company Sinovac announced that their inactivated vaccine protected monkeys.

Another approach is based on the fact that our immune system makes antibodies that lock precisely onto viruses. As scientists came to understand this, it occurred to them that they didnt have to inject a whole virus into someone to trigger immunity. All they needed was to deliver the fragment of a viral protein that was the precise target.

Today these so-called subunit viral vaccines are used against hepatitis B and shingles. Many Covid-19 subunit vaccines are now in testing.

In the 1990s, researchers began working on vaccines that enlisted our own cells to help train the immune system. The foundation of these vaccines is typically a virus called an adenovirus. The adenovirus can infect our cells, but is altered so that it doesnt make us sick.

Scientists can add a gene to the adenovirus from the virus they want to fight, creating whats known as a viral vector. Some viral vectors then invade our cells, stimulating the immune system to make antibodies.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and the Chinese company CanSino Biologics have created a viral vector vaccine for Covid-19, and theyve started safety trials on volunteers. Others including Johnson & Johnson are going to launch trials of their own in the coming months.

Some groups, including the American company Inovio Pharmaceuticals, are taking a totally different approach. Instead of injecting viruses or protein fragments, theyre injecting pure DNA, which is read by the cells machinery, making a copy as an RNA molecule. The RNA is then read by the cells protein-building factories, making a viral protein. The protein in turn comes out of the cell, where immune cells bump into it and make an antibody to it.

Other teams are creating RNA molecules rather than DNA. Moderna and a group at Imperial College London have launched safety trials for RNA vaccines. While experimental, these genetic vaccines can be quickly designed and tested.

It is one thing to design a vaccine in record time. It is an entirely different challenge to manufacture and distribute one on a scale never before attempted billions of doses, specially packaged and transported at below-zero temperatures, to nearly every corner of the world.

If you want to give a vaccine to a billion people, it better be very safe and very effective, said Dr. Stoffels of Johnson & Johnson. But you also need to know how to make it in amounts weve never really seen before.

So the race is on to get ahead of the enormous logistical issues, from basic manufacturing capacity to the shortages of medical glass and stoppers that Mr. Gates and others have warned of.

Researchers at Johnson & Johnson are trying to make a five-dose vial to save precious glass, which might work if a smaller dose is enough for inoculation.

Each potential vaccine will require its own customized production process in special clean facilities for drug making. Building from scratch might cost tens of millions of dollars per plant. Equipping one existing facility could easily cost from $5 million to $20 million. Ordering and installing the necessary equipment can take months.

Governments as well as organizations like the Gates Foundation and the nonprofit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations are putting up money for production facilities well before any particular vaccine is proven effective.

Whats more, some vaccines including those being tested by the American companies Moderna and Inovio rely on technology that has never before yielded a drug that was licensed for use or mass-produced.

But even traditional processes face challenges.

Because of staff illnesses and social distancing, the pandemic this spring slashed productivity by 20 percent at the MilleporeSigma facility in Danvers, Mass., that supplies many drug makers with the equipment used for brewing vaccines.

Then, about three weeks ago, the first clinical trials for new proposed vaccines started. Urgent calls poured from customers around the world. Even before the first phase of the first trials, manufacturers were scrambling.

Demand went through the roof, and everybody wanted it yesterday, said Udit Batra, MilleporeSigmas chief executive, who has expanded production and asked other customers to accept delays to avoid becoming a bottleneck.

Treatments Versus Vaccines

Even as the world waits for a vaccine, a potential treatment for coronavirus is already here and more could be on the way.

Remdesivir showed modest success in a federally funded clinical trial, slowing the progression of the disease, but without significantly reducing fatality rates.

The F.D.A.s decision to allow its use comes as hundreds of other drugs mainly existing medicines that are being used for other conditions are being tested around the world to see if they hold promise. The F.D.A. said there are currently 72 therapies in trial.

Studies of drugs tend to move more quickly than vaccine trials. Vaccines are given to millions of people who are not yet ill, so they must be extremely safe. But in sicker people, that calculus changes, and side effects might be an acceptable risk.

As a result, clinical trials can be conducted with fewer people. And because drugs are tested in people who are already sick, results can be seen more quickly than in vaccine trials, where researchers must wait to see who gets infected.

Public health experts have cautioned there will likely be no magic pill. Rather, they are hoping for incremental advances that make Covid-19 less deadly.

Almost nothing is 100 percent, especially when you are dealing with a virus that really creates a lot of havoc in the body, said Dr. Luciana Borio, a former director of medical and biodefense preparedness for the National Security Council under President Trump.

Antiviral drugs like remdesivir battle the virus itself, slowing its replication in the body.

The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine which has been enthusiastically promoted by Mr. Trump and also received emergency authorization to be used in coronavirus patients showed early promise in the laboratory. However, small, limited studies in humans have so far been disappointing.

Many in the medical community are closely watching the development of antibody drugs that could act to neutralize the virus, either once someone is already sick or as a way of blocking the infection in the first place.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. commissioner, and others said that by the fall, the treatment picture for Covid-19 could look more hopeful.

If proven effective in further trials, remdesivir may become more widely used. One or two antibody treatments may also become available, providing limited protection to health care workers.

Even without a vaccine, Dr. Borio said, a handful of early treatments could make a difference. If you can protect people that are vulnerable and you can treat people that come down with the disease effectively, she said, then I think it will change the trajectory of this pandemic.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, David D. Kirkpatrick from London, Carl Zimmer and Katie Thomas from New York and Sui-Lee Wee from Singapore. Denise Grady and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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Profits and Pride at Stake, the Race for a Vaccine Intensifies - The New York Times

Data On Thousands Of Twins Reveals How Genetics Influences Covid-19 Symptoms – IFLScience

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Taking a deep look at data on thousands of twins has shown how some Covid-19 symptoms might be more influenced by our genetics than others.

Researchers at Kings College London analyzed data on 2,633 identical and fraternal twins who have been using their Covid-19 Symptom Tracker app, which also includes the data of 2.7 million other users.The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, can be found on the preprint server medRxiv.

Their preliminary findings suggest that genetic factors could be responsible for about 50 percent of the differences between peoples symptoms of Covid-19, the list of which seems to be ever-growing.The development of some key Covid-19 symptoms, such as fever, fatigue, shortness of breath, diarrhea, and the loss of taste and smell, appear to be strongly influenced by genes. On the other hand, environmental factors appear to explain the development of symptoms such as a hoarse voice, cough, chest pain, and abdominal pain. Thispotentially explains why the virus appears to impact some people severely while others experience relatively mild or no symptoms.

The Covid-19 Symptom Tracker app asks people in the UK on a daily basis about the presence or absence of common symptoms. You can check out the latest figures from the app on itsinteractive map.The +2,600 twins using the app were recruited from TwinsUK, one of the most detailed research projects on twins in the world. Together, this information was used to see whether typical symptoms of a likely COVID-19 infection were more or less common in identical twins (who share 100 percent of their genes) compared with non-identical twins (who share 50 percent of their genes,just like regular full siblings).

The idea was to basically look at the similarities in symptoms or non-symptoms between the identical twins, who share 100 percent of their genes, and the non-identical twins, who only share half of their genes, Professor Tim Spector, a genetic epidemiologist at Kings College London, toldThe Guardian.This disease is very weird, the way it has a very different presentation in the population in different people what we are showing is that [it] isnt random. It is not mainly due to where you live or who you have seen; a lot of it is something innate about you."

There are some drawbacks to the research, namely because all the results are based on self-reporting, which means a fair amount of subjectivity might sneak into the results. Nevertheless, the unique project offers a rare opportunity for scientists to study large amounts of data on Covid-19 from people who have not sought out medical attention.

Our twins are fantastically committed, enthusiastic health research participants who have already been studied in unprecedented detail, putting us in a unique position to provide vital answers to support the global fight against Covid-19, Professor Spector said in a statement.

The more of the public that also use the app, the better the real-time data we will have to combat the outbreak.

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Data On Thousands Of Twins Reveals How Genetics Influences Covid-19 Symptoms - IFLScience

The pieces of the puzzle of covid-19s origin are coming to light – The Economist

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May 2nd 2020

Editors note: The Economist is making some of its most important coverage of the covid-19 pandemic freely available to readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. To receive it, register here. For our coronavirus tracker and more coverage, see our hub

AURIC GOLDFINGER, villain of the novel which bears his name, quotes a vivid Chicago aphorism to James Bond: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time its enemy action.

Until 2002 medical science knew of a handful of coronaviruses that infected human beings, none of which caused serious illness. Then, in 2002, a virus now called SARS-CoV surfaced in the Chinese province of Guangdong. The subsequent outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) killed 774 people around the world before it was brought under control. In 2012 another new illness, Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS), heralded the arrival of MERS-CoV, which while not spreading as far and as wide as SARS (bar an excursion to South Korea) has not yet been eliminated. It has killed 858 people to date, the most recent of them on February 4th.

The third time, it was SARS-CoV-2, now responsible for 225,000 covid-19 deaths. Both SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are closely related to coronaviruses found in wild bats. In the case of SARS-CoV, the accepted story is that the virus spread from bats in a cave in Yunnan province into civets, which were sold at markets in Guangdong. In the case of MERS-CoV, the virus spread from bats into camels. It now passes regularly from camels to humans, which makes it hard to eliminate, but only spreads between people in conditions of close proximity, which makes it manageable.

An origin among bats seems overwhelmingly likely for SARS-CoV-2, too. The route it took from bat to human, though, has yet to be identified. If, like MERS-CoV, the virus is still circulating in an animal reservoir, it could break out again in the future. If not, some other virus will surely try something similar. Peter Ben Embarek, an expert on zoonoses (diseases passed from animals to people) at the World Health Organisation says that such spillovers are becoming more common as humans and their farmed animals push into new areas where they have closer contact with wildlife. Understanding the detail of how such spillovers occur should provide insights into stopping them.

In some minds, though, the possibility looms of enemy action on the part of something larger than a virus. Since the advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s, conspiracy theorists have pointed to pretty much every new infectious disease, from AIDs to Ebola to MERS to Lyme disease to SARS to Zika, as being a result of human tinkering or malevolence.

The politics of the covid-19 pandemic mean that this time such theories have an even greater appeal than normal. The pandemic started in China, where the governments ingrained urge to cover problems up led it to delay measures that might have curtailed its spread. It has claimed its greatest toll in America, where the recorded number of covid-19 deaths already outstrips the number of names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC.

These facts would have led to accusations ringing out across the Pacific come what may. What makes things worse is a suspicion in some quarters that SARS-CoV-2 might in some way be connected to Chinese virological research, and that saying so may reapportion any blame.

There is no evidence for the claim. Western experts say categorically that the sequence of the new viruss genomewhich Chinese scientists published early on, openly and accuratelyreveals none of the telltales genetic engineering would leave in its wake. But it remains a fact that in Wuhan, where the outbreak was first spotted, there is a laboratory where scientists have in the past deliberately made coronaviruses more pathogenic.

Such research is carried out in laboratories around the world. Its proponents see it as a vital way of studying the question that covid-19 has brought so cruelly into the spotlight: how does a virus become the sort of thing that starts a pandemic? That some of this research has been done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) seems all but certainly a coincidence. Without a compelling alternative account of the diseases origin, however, there is room for doubt to remain.

The origin of the virus behind the 2003 SARS outbreakclassic SARS, as some virologists now wryly call itwas established in large part by Shi Zhengli, a researcher at WIV sometimes referred to in Chinese media as the bat lady. Over a period of years she and her team visited remote locations all across the country in search of a close relative of SARS-CoV in bats or their guano. They found one in a cave full of horseshoe bats in Yunnan.

It is in the collection of viral genomes assembled during those studies that scientists have now found the bat virus closest to SARS-CoV-2. A strain called RaTG13 gathered in the same cave in Yunnan shares 96% of its genetic sequence with the new virus. RaTG13 is not that viruss ancestor. It is something more like its cousin. Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney, estimates that the 4% difference between the two represents at least 20 years of evolutionary divergence from some common antecedent, and probably something more like 50.

Although bats could, in theory, have passed a virus descended from that antecedent directly to humans, experts find the idea unlikely. The bat viruses look different from SARS-CoV-2 in a specific way. In SARS-CoV-2 the spike protein on the viral particles surface has a receptor-binding domain (RBD) that is adept at sticking to a particular molecule on the surface of the human cells the virus infects. The RBD in bat coronaviruses is not the same.

One recent study suggests that SARS-CoV-2 is the product of natural genomic recombination. Different coronaviruses infecting the same host are more than happy to swap bits of genome. If a bat virus similar to RaTG13 got into an animal already infected with a coronavirus which boasted an RBD better suited to infecting humans, a basically batty virus with a more human-attuned RBD might well arise. That is what SARS-CoV-2 looks like.

Early on, it was widely imagined that the intermediate host was likely to be a species sold in Wuhans Huanan Seafood and Wildlife Market, a place where all sorts of creatures, from raccoon dogs to ferret badgers, and from near and far, are crammed together in unsanitary conditions. Many early human cases of covid-19 were associated with this market. Jonathan Epstein, vice-president of science with EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO, says of 585 swabs of different surfaces around the market, about 33 were positive for SARS-CoV-2. They all came from the area known to sell wild animals. That is pretty much as strong as circumstantial evidence gets.

The first animal to come under serious suspicion was the pangolin. A coronavirus found in pangolins has an RBD essentially identical to that of SARS-CoV-2, suggesting that it might have been the virus with which the bat virus recombined on its way to becoming SARS-CoV-2. Pangolins are used in traditional medicine, and though they are endangered, they can nonetheless be found on menus. There are apparently no records of them being traded at the Huanan market. But given that such trading is illegal, and that such records would now look rather incriminating, this is hardly proof that they were not.

The fact that pangolins are known to harbour viruses from which SARS-CoV-2 could have picked up its human-compatible RBD is certainly suggestive. But a range of other animals might harbour such viruses, too; its just that scientists have not yet looked all that thoroughly. The RBD in SARS-CoV-2 is useful not only for attacking the cells of human beings and, presumably, pangolins. It provides access to similar cells in other species, too. In recent weeks SARS-CoV-2 has been shown to have found its way from humans into domestic cats, farmed mink and a tiger. There is some evidence that it can actually pass between cats, which makes it conceivable that they were the intermediatethough there is as yet no evidence of a cat infecting a human.

The markets appeal as a site for the human infections behind the Wuhan outbreak remains strong; a market in Guangdong is blamed for the spread of SARS. Without a known intermediate, though, the evidence against it remains circumstantial. Though many early human cases were associated with the market, plenty were not. They may have been linked to people with ties to the market in ways not yet known. But one cannot be sure.

The viral genomes found in early patients are so similar as to suggest strongly that the virus jumped from its intermediate host to people only once. Estimates based on the rate at which genomes diverge give the earliest time for this transfer as early October 2019. If that is right there were almost certainly infections which were not serious, or which did not reach hospitals, or which were not recognised as odd, before the first official cases were seen in Wuhan at the beginning of December. Those early cases may have taken place elsewhere.

Ian Lipkin, the boss of the Centre for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, in New York, is working with Chinese researchers to test blood samples taken late last year from patients with pneumonia all around China, to see if there is any evidence for the virus having spread to Wuhan from somewhere else. If there is, then it may have entered Huanan market not in a cage, but on two legs. The market is popular with visitors as well as locals, and is close to Hankou railway station, a hub in Chinas high-speed rail network.

Further research may make when, where and how the virus got into people clearer. There is scope for a lot more virus hunting in a wider range of possible intermediate species. If it were possible to conduct detailed interviews with those who came down with the earliest cases of covid-19, that genetic sampling could be better aimed, says Dr Embarek, and with a bit of luck one might get to the source. But the time needed to do this, he adds, might be quick, or it might be extremely long.

If it turns out to have originated elsewhere, the new viruss identification during the early stages of the Wuhan epidemic may turn out to be thanks to the citys concentration of virological know-howknow-how that is now surely being thrown into sequencing more viruses from more sources. But until a satisfactory account of a natural spillover is achieved, that same concentration of know-how, at WIV and another local research centre, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, will continue to attract suspicion.

In 2017 WIV opened the first biosecurity-level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory in Chinathe sort of high-containment facility in which work is done on the most dangerous pathogens. A large part of Dr Shis post-SARS research there has been aimed at understanding the potential which viruses still circulating among bats have to spill over into the human population. In one experiment she and Ge Xingyi, also of the WIV, in collaboration with American and Italian scientists, explored the disease-like potential of a bat coronavirus, SHC014-CoV, by recombining its genome with that of a mouse-infecting coronavirus. The WIV newsletter of November 2015 reported that the resulting virus could replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titres equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. In early April this newsletter and all others were removed from the institutes website.

This work, results from which were also published in Nature Medicine, demonstrated that SARS-CoVs jump from bats to humans had not been a fluke; other bat coronaviruses were capable of something similar. Useful to know. But giving pathogens and potential pathogens extra powers in order to understand what they may be capable of is a controversial undertaking. These gain of function experiments, their proponents insist, have important uses such as understanding drug resistance and the tricks viruses employ to evade the immune system. They also carry obvious risks: the techniques on which they depend could be abused; their products could leak. The creation of an enhanced strain of bird flu in 2011 in an attempt to understand the peculiar virulence of the flu strain responsible for the pandemic of 1918-19 caused widespread alarm. America stopped funding gain-of-function work for several years.

Filippa Lentzos, who studies biomedicine and security at Kings College, London, says the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 having an origin connected with legitimate research is being discussed widely in the world of biosecurity. The possibilities speculated about include a leak of material from a laboratory and also the accidental infection of a human being in the course of work either in a lab or in the field.

Leaks from laboratories, including BSL-4 labs, are not unheard of. The worlds last known case of smallpox was caused by a leak from a British laboratory in 1978. An outbreak of foot and mouth disease in 2007 had a similar origin. In America there have been accidental releases and mishandlings involving Ebola, and, from a lower-containment-level laboratory, a deadly strain of bird flu. In China laboratory workers seem to have been infected with SARS and transmitted it to contacts outside on at least two occasions.

Things doubtless leak out of labs working at lower biosafety levels, too. But how much they do so is unknown, in part because people worry about them less. And as in other parts of this story the unknown is a Petri dish in which speculation can grow. This may be part of the reason for interest in a lab at the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. A preprint published on ResearchGate, a website, by two Chinese scientists and subsequently removed suggested that work done there may have been cause for concern. This lab is reported to have housed animalsincluding, for one study, hundreds of bats from Hubei and Zhejiang provincesand to have specialised in pathogen collection.

Richard Pilch, who works on chemical and biological weapons non-proliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, in California, says that there is one feature of the new virus which might conceivably have arisen during passaging experiments in which pathogens are passed between hosts so as to study the evolution of their ability to spread. This is the polybasic cleavage site, which might enhance infectivity. SARS-CoV-2 has such a site on its spike protein. Its closest relatives among bat coronaviruses do not. But though such a cleavage site could have arisen through passaging there is no evidence that, in this case, it did. It could also have evolved in the normal way as the virus passed from host to host. Dr Holmes, meanwhile, has said that there is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2...originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Though others have speculated about coincidences and possibilities, no one has been able, as yet, to undermine that statement.

Many scientists think that with so many biologists actively hunting for bat viruses, and gain-of-function work becoming more common, the world is at increasing risk of a laboratory-derived pandemic at some point. One of my biggest hopes out of this pandemic is that we address this issueit really worries me, says Dr Pilch. Today there are around 70 BSL-4 sites in 30 countries. More such facilities are planned.

Again, though, it is necessary to consider the unknown. Every year there are tens of thousands of fatal cases of respiratory disease around the world of which the cause is mysterious. Some of them may be the result of unrecognised zoonoses. The question of whether they really are, and how those threats may stack up, needs attention. That attention needs laboratories. It also needs a degree of open co-operation that America is now degrading with accusations and reductions in funding, and that China has taken steps to suppress at source. That suppression has done nothing to help the country; indeed, by supporting speculation, it may yet harm it.

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This article appeared in the Science and technology section of the print edition under the headline "Only connect"

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The pieces of the puzzle of covid-19s origin are coming to light - The Economist

LIST: UW awards $2.2 million to groups, scientists fighting the coronavirus in Wisconsin – WMTV

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MADISON, Wis. (WMTV)-- UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) is announcing a total of $2.2 million in awards given to researchers and community organizations who are working to lessen the impact of coronavirus in Wisconsin.

SMPH's Wisconsin Partnership Program is awarding the funds to 11 community-led initiatives as well as ten research grants, up to $150,000 each, to support UWMadison experts in scientific, medical and public health approaches.

We are pleased to support such a broad range of innovative projects, including efforts to support the most vulnerable in our communities and studies that have the potential to advance the fight against this pandemic, said Robert N. Golden, MD, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, in a statement Friday.

View the list of funded projects below:

Community grants:

Men's Emergency Shelter-Virtual Health Assessments ($62,000) (Dane County): Awarded to Porchlight, Inc. to immediately reduce the spread of COVID-19 by using an innovative technology-enabled solution of virtual volunteers to safely and accurately screen all homeless shelter guests daily and prior to entry of the homeless shelter sites.

- Bilingual (English/Spanish) Short- and Long-term Assistance to Vulnerable Population ($32,290) (Madison): Awarded to the Catholic Multicultural Center to address the impact of COVID-19 among its English and Spanish-speaking clients by addressing immediate needs of food and hygiene and helping to obtain employment or unemployment benefits.

- Immediate COVID-19 Response for 4K-12 Students ($138,160) (Madison): Awarded to the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) to provide immediate, extended, personalized support and resources for the physical and mental health of a group of 2000 MMSD 4K-12th graders with medical conditions associated with poor outcomes from COVID-19.

- Farms to Families/De Granjas a Familias Resilience Boxes ($57,190) (Dane County): Awarded to REAP Food Group in collaboration with Roots4Change, a cooperative of community health workers serving Dane Countys Latino/Indigenous families, to develop a delivery of care system related to the COVID-19 pandemic, informed by the needs of Latino/Indigenous families, local, small, and minority scale farmers, food entrepreneurs of color, and community-based doulas.

- WeRISE: Black Birth Workers Response to COVID-19 Project ($149,600) (Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties): Awarded to the African American Breastfeeding Network for Black Birth Workers (doulas) and the clients they serve to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among Black/African American families across southeastern Wisconsin.

- Health Community Education Strategy for the Latino Community ($150,000) (Milwaukee): Awarded to Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers to develop and disseminate accurate information as quickly and broadly as possible to help Milwaukees Latino community navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

- COVID-19 Response for Milwaukees Uninsured Adults ($129,630) (Milwaukee): Awarded to Bread of Healing Clinic to address and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 through outreach and access to care through telehealth for low-income people of color who are uninsured.

- Services for Hmong and other Refugee Communities ($150,000) (statewide): Awarded to the Hmong Institute to address the immediate COVID-19 related needs of underserved immigrant communities across the state. Specifically, this project will target Southeast Asian (e.g., Hmong, Laotian, Cambodian), Burmese (e.g., Karen, Rohingya), Nepalese and Tibetan elders and parents who lack access to mainstream services due to language and transportation barriers and face significant physical and mental health needs due to preexisting health disparities and post-traumatic stress disorder.

- Markets to Address Food Insecurity of Vulnerable Populations ($54,010) (Green Bay): Awarded to Wello to address food insecurity in Greater Green Bay through an approach that meets the needs of the areas most vulnerable residents as well as local farmers.

- Wood County Community Response to COVID-19 ($143,490) (Wood County): Awarded to Marshfield Child Advocacy Center, Marshfield Clinic Health System, to reduce the risk of child maltreatment in Wood County families as a result of parental stress related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Barron County Integrated Response to Slow Community Spread of COVID-19 ($60,630) (Barron County): Awarded to Barron County to reduce the spread of COVID-19 through innovative education and outreach efforts to the communitys Spanish and Somali communities, and in coordination with some of the countys largest employers.

Research Grants (up to $150,000 each):

- Novel COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies for patient diagnostics, therapy and research: Awarded to David Andes, MD, SMPH Department of Medicine, to address the immediate need for testing and therapeutic strategies to treat COVID-19.

-Alternative means to diagnose COVID-19 pneumonia: Awarded to Guang-Hong Chen, PhD, SMPH Department of Medical Physics, to improve the accuracy of identification of COVID-19 pneumonia on routine chest radiographs.

- Leveraging social networks and trusted community influencers to disseminate an accurate and up-to-date understanding of COVID-19 in Black, Latinx and American Indian Communities: Awarded to Carey Gleason, PhD, SMPH Department of Medicine, to establish accurate communications about COVID-19 in underserved minority communities, including African American and Latinx communities and the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin by leveraging long-standing collaborative relationships with leaders in these communities.

- A negative pressure isolation head chamber to protect healthcare workers from airborne transmission of aerosolized viruses: Awarded to Hau Le, MD, SMPH Department of Surgery, to address a significant need to protect healthcare workers during initial resuscitation/intubation of critically ill COVID-19 patients. The project will determine the effectiveness of a negative pressure isolation head chamber ("Badger Box") in containing aerosol dispersion under laboratory and standard hospital room conditions.

- Teaching the general public how to test and maintain readily available face masks: Awarded to Scott Sanders, PhD, UWMadison College of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, to teach the public how to test a mask after they put it on, using a simple test, also developed by this project, and disseminate this critical information through instructional videos. The project will also teach the public how to maintain and safely reuse masks.

- Creating infrastructure to study, test for and track the COVID-19 virus in Wisconsin: Awarded to Miriam Shelef, MD, PhD, SMPH Department of Medicine, to establish a COVID-19 convalescent tissue biorepository for blood and nasal samples from individuals who have recovered from COVID-19. This will be used in research and to track the prevalence of the coronavirus in southcentral Wisconsin by collecting discarded plasma from blood donated by patients with no symptoms of COVID-19.

- Role of naso-oropharyngeal antiseptic deconolonization to reduce COVID-19 viral shedding and disease transmission: SHIELD Study: Awarded to Daniel Shirley, MD, SMPH Department of Medicine, to assess the feasibility and efficacy of self-administered nasal and oropharyngeal disinfectants in reducing the development of COVID-19 illness in healthcare workers.

- COVID-19 and the nasal microbiome: potential marker of disease outcomes and novel antivirals: Awarded to Cameron Currie, PhD, UWMadison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Department of Bacteriology, to study the nasal microbiome to determine potential compositions that are associated with COVID-19 outcomes for predictive biomarkers of disease severity and to discover novel naturally occurring novel antiviral compounds.

- Genetic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 spread in Wisconsin to inform outbreak control: Awarded to Thomas Friedrich, PhD, UWMadison School of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, to undertake genetic surveillance of coronavirus spread in Wisconsin and also determine whether an outbreak is due to community spread or an introduction of coronavirus into a community due to travel within or into the state.

- To test the protective efficacy of whole-inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in Syrian hamsters: Awarded to Yoshihiro Kawaoka, DVM, PhD, UWMadison School of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, to test a novel approach for developing a potential vaccine for COVID-19 in a recently established animal model for coronavirus research.

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LIST: UW awards $2.2 million to groups, scientists fighting the coronavirus in Wisconsin - WMTV

World Laughter Day 2020: Why we must remember that laughter is indeed the best medicine – Hindustan Times

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Youre watching your favourite comedy show from the 90s like Friends, Seinfeld, or Hum Paanch and realise youre not laughing alone. The simulated sounds of laughter in the background of the show tend to make you smile or laugh more often at the comedic punches. Youve caught the best virus there is the contagious laughing virus. And you dont mind it at all.

Laughter, the best medicine

In these testing times of a contagious virus on the loose that threatens to impact our health negatively, we have to remember we still have a very strong weapon with us that can counter our chances of getting unwell. No, Im not talking about turmeric milk or your steamer, though do keep them handy. Im talking about your ability to laugh.

The origin of Laughter Day

It really astonished some researchers when people in the same environment and with similar genetic make-up lived till different ages and reported their satisfaction with life differently. The key factor, many research studies discovered, was laughter. The intensity and duration of laughter each day boosted a persons well-being and outlook towards life.

Soon, many laughter clubs and movements were formed and people across the globe have been observing the first Sunday of the month of May as World Laughter Day.

Ever since its inception in 1998 in the spirited city of Mumbai, this day has been serving us as a reminder of the medicine thats for free, generated by our minds, for the benefit of our mind and body!

Benefits of laughter

Now, Ill try to make you see the act of laughter the way I see it as a psychologist and break down the benefits of laughing in terms of the thought process it serves, the emotions it evokes, the behaviours it elicits and the impact it has on your overall physiological and psychological wellbeing.

Can you recall what made you laugh recently? Was it a thought, an idea or was it seeing someone almost slip on soapwater comically? The processing of such an act or a statement is the work of our beautiful brain. Our brain thrives on comedy. And when I write thrive, I mean it actually generates feel-good brain chemicals, which also relieve pain.

Interestingly, laughter is less about humour and more about communicating as well as releasing tense emotions. We can actually catch laughter. The taped laughter in TV shows I mentioned earlier, actually invites you to participate. Often when you laugh with someone, you have a shared experience of empathy and understanding. Research has indicated that social laughter, that is sharing laughs with others, is even better than laughing alone. The endorphin release we have from social laughter leads to strengthening of social bonds between humans. We may even feel pleasurable and calming effects from the endorphin release. Now you know why you need to attend online live comedy acts being organised by your favourite clubs during this lockdown period.

Need to get rid of negative emotions? You cant feel anxious, angry, or sad when youre laughing. Try it! (Okay, unless its a very sad-funny meme, but still, you laughed and that lowered the sadness!)

Humans are social beings. Thats why this lockdown period of living extremely sedentary and physically asocial lives is impacting our sense of self. Touch. A single word with great impact, comes very close to its competitor laughter. We can pacify our need for touch and stimulating social interactions by engaging in behaviours and acts that will bring a smile on our faces or on the ones around us, virtually or physically.

Laughter boosts T-cells which are specialised cells in our immune system. When activated, these cells fight off sickness. So, besides eating a spoon of chyawanprash, popping a multivitamin and drinking 8-11 glasses of water a day, also ensure youre getting a good dose of laughter. Not only will your immunity be boosted, youd also find it easier to tackle work, pesky family members/roommates, and youd be exercising your face muscles and burning calories which you can totally count as a workout!

Divya Dureja is a Counselling Psychologist, 3 times TEDx speaker, Performance Poet and LGBTQIA+ Wellness Advocate.

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World Laughter Day 2020: Why we must remember that laughter is indeed the best medicine - Hindustan Times

When COVID-19 Mutates, What Are the Risks? – MedicineNet

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By Peter Schelden on 04/30/2020 2:00 PM

Source: MedicineNet Health News

Even as the virus that causes COVID-19 continues to infect and kill across all habitable continents, the specter of a new and perhaps more deadly SARS-CoV-2 mutation looms over the horizon.

How worried should we be?

All viruses are prone to mutate. But RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2 mutate more frequently than anything else in the world.

RNA viruses include a wide variety of familiar infections like:

Some estimates say RNA viruses account for up to 44% of all emerging infectious disease.

When a virus mutates, its new genetic changes usually cause it to be less harmful, or even harmless. But there is always a small chance that a mutation could cause a more harmful strain, which is what many researchers believe caused the Spanish flu of 1918 to become the deadliest modern pandemic.

Virus genes are not 'set' as they are for life forms like humans. They mutate so often that they are sometimes called a 'quasispecies,' in which a 'population of particles' infect a host that are nonidentical but related. The whole viral population may share roughly similar genetic traits, with a lot of variation, according to Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D., Higgins Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of CUNY.

Sometimes mutations causeserious difficulties in treating or inoculating people from infection, or it can provoke more dangerous versions of the disease. Some of these problems have sometimes occurred in HIV, hepatitis C, and measles, which are all caused by RNA viruses, as is COVID-19, the novel coronavirus.

But virus experts say that even if a mutation causes a death rate increase, this does not necessarily make a virus more deadly overall. Killing your host quickly can make it hard to spread to a new one, and natural selection often prevents viruses from becoming more deadly as they mutate.

In fact, mutations often prevent the virus from successfully spreading, or lead to a weaker version of the original. Scientists hunt for weak replicants of viruses for their potential as vaccine strains.

All viruses mutate at different rates. More than 25 RNA viruses have been measured in labs, with individual viruses counted for mutations. Scientists have found that anywhere from one in ten thousand to one in a million RNA virus particles contains a mutation, depending on the type.

Here are some mutation rate estimates for other known viruses. This number tells you roughly how many viral particle mutants will exist in a given viral population:

This does not tell the whole story about a virus' potential to mutate, but it offers a rough idea of how easily and often they do.

COVID-19 is not as well-studied as these other diseases. But an estimated range of its mutation rate has emerged from a study of 30 publicly available samples of SARS-CoV-2. Researchers at Johns Hopkins estimate the mutation rate of COVID-19 at:

The facts about COVID-19 are being reinterpreted with better understanding every day. An early study that claimed the existence of a supposed "strain S" and "strain L" of the virus that causes COVID-19 was published March 3. It claimed to identify one strain in China that had become more aggressive than the other.

But that study was widely criticized for exaggerating the significance of its claims, as well as for using a small sample pool.

A mutant variation of the COVID-19 virus that causes additional concern has yet to be found, according to researchers. This is based on the known mutations of SARS-CoV-2, which number over 100.

"Different clades (evolutionary descendants) emerge as viruses evolve," says one Johns Hopkins study. "This is entirely normal and does not mean there are new strains of SARS-CoV-2 that are more pathogenic than others circulating right now."

That doesn't mean scientists aren't interested in how COVID-19 mutates. In addition to searching for weak mutations that might serve as vaccines, researchers can track the spread of the disease by following its mutations. This can help us know where new infections are coming from, among other important details about the novel coronavirus.

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When COVID-19 Mutates, What Are the Risks? - MedicineNet

Facts that China is trying to suppress about origin of COVID-19 – WION

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A recently published scientific article states:

Due to the broad-spectrum of research conducted over almost 20 years on bat SARS-CoV [severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses] justified by their potential to spill over from animal to human, a possible synthetic origin by laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] is a reasonable hypothesis.

China would like that hypothesis erased from the public consciousness.

The Chinese government, the media and some scientists are desperately trying to convince the public that COVID-19 is a naturally-occurring disease, which was transmitted from animals to humans in the Wuhan Seafood Market.

If COVID-19 leaked from a laboratory, the political and economic consequences for China are enormous.

If it was man-made and leaked from a laboratory, the implications are too grim for many to imagine.

The argument that COVID-19 is naturally-occurring is based nearly entirely on a single, but widely-cited Nature Medicine article entitled The Proximal Origin of SAR-CoV-2.

That conclusion stems primarily from a structural analysis comparing COVID-19 with bat and pangolin (scaly anteater) coronaviruses suggesting a natural evolutionary process in which COVID-19 mutated in an animal population and acquired the ability to infect humans.

Such a scenario does occur and it appears to be the origin of a number of animal-borne coronavirus infections in humans.

Based on the evidence provided in the much-cited Nature Medicine article, however, that conclusion is not obvious.

Although COVID-19 bears a striking structural similarity to the bat coronavirus RaTG13, the critical receptor binding domain, which initiates attachment to human cells, is closer to pangolins.

It is highly unlikely that the bat RaTG13 coronavirus and the pangolin coronavirus combined naturally through a process called reassortment because it would require simultaneous infection of the two viruses in the same animal cell.

It could, however, have been accomplished in a laboratory.

As the recently-published scientific article notes, a new chimeric or combined RaTG13-pangolin coronavirus strain could have been created through an artificial recombinant event, using well-established bioengineering methods.

Another possible indication of genetic manipulation is the presence of a furin polybasic cleavage site in COVID-19 as represented by the PRRA amino acid insertion, which does not exist in any of the bat or pangolin close relatives and is completely out of frame compared to the bat RaTG13 and pangolin sequences.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the furin polybasic cleavage site in COVID-19 occurs in the precise location known to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility in viruses.

Methods for the insertion of a polybasic cleavage site in infectious bronchitis coronavirus have been described by Chinese scientists and that artificial genetic alteration resulted in increased pathogenicity.

In parallel, animal models for the addition of structures important to the function of coronaviruses, called O-linked glycans, have been used by Chinese scientists at the Chongqing Military Medical University, as well as animal models to specifically select for the human angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 receptor, the entry step for COVID-19 infection.

There is no doubt that China has the knowledge and technology to have created COVID-19. Whether that actually was done is yet to be determined and should be undergoing vigorous scientific investigation.

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)

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Facts that China is trying to suppress about origin of COVID-19 - WION

COVID-19: What’s RNA research got to do with it? – University of Rochester

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April 28, 2020

Rochester research into RNA structure and function provides key information for developing coronavirus treatments.

Viruses like the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 are able to unleash their fury because of a devious weapon: ribonucleic acid, also known as RNA.

A contingent of researchers at the University of Rochester study the RNA of viruses to better understand how RNAs work and how they are involved in diseases. As COVID-19 continues to spread around the globe, RNA research provides an important foundation for developing antiviral drugs, vaccines, and other therapeutics to disrupt the virus and stop infections.

The Universitys website is a way to find guidance and critical information during a rapidly changing situation.

Find out what to do if you or a close contact have symptoms or think you may have been exposed.

Understanding RNA structure and function helps us understand how to throw a therapeutic wrench into what the COVID-19 RNA doesmake new virus that can infect more of our cells and also the cells of other human beings, says Lynne Maquat, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center and the director of Rochesters Center for RNA Biology.

In the past few decades, as scientists came to realize that genetic material is largely regulated by the RNA it encodes, that most of our DNA produces RNA, and that RNA is not only a target but also a tool for disease therapies, the RNA research world has exploded, Maquat says. The University of Rochester understood this.

In 2007, Maquat founded the Center for RNA Biology as a means of conducting interdisciplinary research in the function, structure, and processing of RNAs. The center involves researchers from both the River Campus and the Medical Center, combining expertise in biology, chemistry, engineering, neurology, and pharmacology.

While much of the research across the University has been put on pause, labs that are involved in coronavirus research remain active.

Our strength as a university is our diversity of research expertise, combined with our highly collaborative nature, says Dragony Fu, an assistant professor of biology on the River Campus and a member of the Center for RNA Biology. We are surrounded by outstanding researchers who enhance our understanding of RNA biology, and a medical center that provides a translational aspect where the knowledge gained from RNA biology can be applied for therapeutics.

In mammals, such as humans, DNA contains genetic instructions that are transcribedor copiedinto RNA. While DNA remains in the cells nucleus, RNA carries the copies of genetic information to the rest of the cell by way of various combinations of amino acids, which it delivers to ribosomes. The ribosomes link the amino acids together to form proteins that then carry out functions within the human body.

Many diseases occur when these gene expressions go awry.

COVID-19, short for coronavirus disease 2019, is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Like many other viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus. This means that, unlike in humans and other mammals, the genetic material for SARS-CoV-2 is encoded in RNA. The viral RNA is sneaky: its features cause the protein synthesis machinery of our cells to mistake it for RNA produced by our own DNA.

While SARS-CoV-2 is a new coronavirus, it likely replicates and functions similar to related coronaviruses that infect animals and humans, says Douglas Anderson, an assistant professor of medicine in the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute and a member of the Center for RNA Biology, who studies how RNA mutations can give rise to human disease.

A graphic created by the New York Times illustrates how the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 enters the body through the nose, mouth, or eyes and attaches to our cells. Once the virus is inside our cells, it releases its RNA. Our hijacked cells serve as virus factories, reading the viruss RNA and making long viral proteins to compromise the immune system. The virus assembles new copies of itself and spreads to more parts of the body andby way of saliva, sweat, and other bodily fluidsto other humans.

Once the virus is in our cells, the entire process of infection and re-infection depends on the viral RNA, Maquat says.

Researchers Douglas Anderson, Dragony Fu, and Lynne Maquat are among the scientists at the University of Rochester who study the RNA of viruses to better understand how RNAs work and how they are involved in diseases. (University of Rochester photos / Matt Wittmeyer / J. Adam Fenster)

Maquat has been studying RNA since 1972 and was part of the earliest wave of scientists to realize the important role RNA plays in human health and disease.

Our cells have a number of ways to combat viruses in what can be viewed as an arms race between host and virus. One of the weapons in our cells arsenal is an RNA surveillance mechanism Maquat discovered called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD).

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay protects us from many genetic mutations that could cause disease if NMD was not active to destroy the RNA harboring the mutation, she says.

Maquats discovery has contributed to the development of drug therapies for genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, and may be useful in developing treatments for coronavirus.

NMD also helps us combat viral infections, which is why many viruses either inhibit or evade NMD, she adds. The genome of the virus COVID-19 is a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA. It is well known that other positive-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses evade NMD by having RNA structures that prevent NMD from degrading viral RNAs.

Maquats lab is currently collaborating with a lab at Harvard University to test how viral proteins can inhibit the NMD machinery.

Like Maquat, Fu studies fundamental aspects of RNAand has found that his research on proteins may, too, be applicable to coronavirus research.

Fus lab analyzes enzymes and proteins that modify the chemical structure of RNA and how these chemical modifications impact the function of RNA. A research group at the University of California, San Francisco, recently identified an interaction between a protein made by the SARS-CoV-9 virus and a protein Fu studies.

This is an intriguing result, and we are currently thinking of ways this interaction could affect the host cell, Fu says. There is emerging evidence that RNA-based viruses undergo RNA modification, so we could use this knowledge to identify key links between the host and pathogen for development of a coronavirus vaccine or treatment.

One of the reasons viruses are such a challenge is that they change and mutate in response to drugs.

Targeting viral RNA, or the proteins it produces, is key for treating this disease.

That means novel virus treatments and vaccines have to be created each time a new strain of virus presents itself. Armed with innovative research on the fundamentals of RNA, scientists are better able to develop and test therapeutics that directly target the RNAs and processes critical to a viruss life cycle.

The University of Rochester Medical Center, for instance, is currently participating in a clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a potential coronavirus treatment called remdesivir, an antiviral drug particularly tailored to attack RNA viruses. The drug inhibits RNA polymerase, an enzyme responsible for copying a DNA sequence into an RNA sequence.

Anderson has found that alternative therapeutics, such as the gene-editing technology CRISPR, may additionally usher in a new approach to how we target and combat infectious diseases, he says.

For the past few years, Andersons lab has developed tools and delivery systems that use the RNA-targeting CRISPR-Cas13 to treat human genetic diseases that affect muscle function. CRISPR-Cas13 is like a molecular pair of scissors that can target specific RNAs for degradation, using small, programmable guide RNAs.

When the health crisis first became apparent in Wuhan, China, researchers in Andersons lab turned their focus toward developing a CRISPR-Cas13 therapeutic aimed at SARS-CoV-2. Applying the knowledge already available about coronavirus RNA replication, they designed single CRISPR guide RNAs capable of targeting every viral RNA that is made within a SARS-CoV-2 infected cell. Using a novel cloning method developed in Andersons lab, multiple CRISPR guide-RNAs could be packaged into a single therapeutic vector (a genetically engineered carrier) to target numerous viral RNA sites simultaneously. The multi-pronged targeting strategy could be used as a therapy to safeguard against virus-induced cell toxicity and prevent escape of viruses which may have undergone mutation.

Infectious viruses and pandemics seemingly come out of nowhere, which has made it hard to rapidly develop and screen traditional small molecule therapeutics or vaccines, Anderson says. There is a clear need to develop alternative targeted therapeutics, such as CRISPR-Cas13, which have the ability to be rapidly reprogrammed to target new emerging pandemics.

While many new treatments for the novel coronavirus are being considered, there is one thing that is certain, Maquat says: Targeting viral RNA, or the proteins it produces, is key for treating this disease.

Tags: Arts and Sciences, Center for RNA Biology, COVID-19, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Department of Biology, Douglas Anderson, Dragony Fu, featured-post, Lynne Maquat, medical center

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Medical, tech investments pay off in Covid-19 war – The Straits Times

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The world is fighting a war against a virus and Singapore scientists are pulling their weight when it comes to building up an arsenal of knowledge that can be used to vanquish the enemy.

But their expertise did not spring up overnight. It is the fruit of the continuing investment in the health and biomedical sciences that Singapore started decades ago - an investment that, during this crisis, is paying off handsomely.

For instance, in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, scientists here developed a diagnostic test that allowed clinicians to identify and quickly isolate infected patients.

Since then, a multitude of inventions and discoveries have been rolled out.

Disinfection robots, armed with ultraviolet ray "swords", will soon rove some public places to get rid of viruses lingering on surfaces.

Swabbing booths have also been designed to provide extra protection for healthcare workers doing large-scale Covid-19 tests.

But as Mr Frederick Chew, chief executive of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), points out, these products do not just appear overnight. They are founded on a strong capability base built up and nurtured painstakingly over time, he tells Insight.

"In terms of peacetime dividends, Singapore is starting to reap tangible health and economic outcomes from investments made into the health and biomedical sciences," he says.

"In this Covid-19 wartime period, the same peacetime capability sets are being strung together to swiftly address Singapore's public health emergency needs."

Today, Singapore's biomedical manufacturing cluster makes up more than 4 per cent of the nation's gross domestic product and employs more than 24,000 people, many of whom are in high-skilled jobs.

It also supports the development of healthcare solutions and products that benefit Singaporeans, given the focus of research on diseases prevalent among Asian populations, says a spokesman for Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF).

Many of the scientists have been working behind the scenes for years. But it was perhaps not until the Covid-19 crisis that the importance of their work has been highlighted.

Singapore has been building up the nation's capabilities in the health and biomedical sciences over the past two decades, notes the NRF spokesman.

This started with the formation of A*Star and its Biomedical Research Council research institutes, which preceded the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003. A*Star was formed in 2002, taking over from what was known as the National Science and Technology Board.

It was this long-term investment that allowed the country to respond quickly and effectively to the Covid-19 outbreak, adds the NRF spokesman.

For example, NRF supported scientists such as Professor Wang Linfa of the Duke-NUS Medical School to pursue basic research on bat-borne viruses, which include coronaviruses. This allowed Prof Wang and his team to achieve significant breakthroughs in Covid-19 when called upon.

Preliminary research has indicated that the coronavirus-causing Covid-19 originated in bats.

It took Prof Wang's team just one week to successfully culture the virus from an infected person's sample after Singapore reported its first case on Jan 23, making it the third country in the world outside China to do so.

The ability to grow the virus in a laboratory during the early stages of the outbreak was a crucial starting point for scientists here, in terms of helping them develop new diagnostic methods or a potential vaccine, for instance.

The Sars outbreak had also spurred action, prompting an emphasis on infectious diseases as a focus area, says the NRF spokesman. This led to the formation of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), which developed state-of-the-art facilities and created a national focal point for work around infectious diseases, she adds.

The experience with infectious diseases over the years, including Sars and the swine and avian influenza, also helped to hone the radars of researchers here.

The moment a series of pneumonia-like cases was reported in Wuhan, China, last December, scientists and clinicians at A*Star and Tan Tock Seng Hospital were already on high alert.

After China shared the genome sequence of the coronavirus in the second week of January, they - scientists and doctors - worked together to develop and roll out a diagnostic test kit in less than a month. This was a record, considering that a similar one for Sars had taken months.

Today, the Fortitude Kit has been deployed in 13 public and private hospitals and laboratories in Singapore, as well as in more than 20 other places, including Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United States, says A*Star.

Microbiologist Julien Lescar, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University's School of Biological Sciences, came to Singapore from France in 2002, just before the outbreak of Sars.

And since then, the scientific landscape in Singapore has progressed tremendously, says Prof Lescar, who studies the molecular structure of RNA viruses, including coronaviruses, and the ways they infect humans.

"I am amazed by the number of excellent dedicated scientists and superb facilities that are now in place here," he says.

"We should pay tribute to the vision of the leaders who supported this and the great dedication of the staff and managers running facilities such as NCID and the hospitals."

Singapore has, over the past 100 days or so, achieved a number of key scientific milestones.

But the work continues, as scientists move to peel back the remaining layers of unknowns about the virus. And many mysteries still remain, says Prof Lescar.

For instance, even though this virus is in the same family as the one that caused Sars, it is still not known why this one is so much more contagious, he says.

It is also unclear why some Covid-19 patients develop severe disease while others do not.

"The good news is that there is a huge international effort to address these issues, which hopefully will lead to vaccines and cures in the form of specific anti-viral drugs," Prof Lescar says.

Preliminary studies have pointed to possible answers, and some important clues may lie in the structure of the virus.

Under a microscope, the coronavirus - called Sars-CoV-2 - appears spherical. In its centre, encased by an oily membrane, is a single-stranded genetic material called RNA. Protruding from the membrane is a crown of spikes made of protein, or S-proteins, Prof Lescar explains.

One possible explanation for the higher infectivity of the virus at the centre of the current outbreak, he says, is that compared with the virus that caused Sars, the spikes of this virus may have a higher affinity for the ACE-2 receptor on the human cell.

Scientists think this receptor, located on the surface of the human cell, could be used by the coronavirus as an entry route.

These spike proteins are what helps the virus "hijack" human cells, the first step of an infection. The S-proteins of the virus latch on to the receptors on the human cell, much like how pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fit together.

This enables the virus to inject its RNA into the human cell, and use the resources of its host to make new copies of the virus.

Prof Lescar says: "It seems like just a few mutations at the surface of the spike protein of the virus are enough to affect how infectious the virus is and also its pathogenicity - the way it harms an infected person."

Viruses are not static but are prone to mutation. This could change the behaviour of a virus, and also affect the sensitivity of a test kit.

Scientists such as Dr Sebastian Maurer-Stroh, deputy executive director of research at A*Star's Bioinformatics Institute, are keeping an eye out on it in case it does.

The active surveillance of the viral genome is key to ensuring that the diagnostic test kits remain sensitive in detecting the virus in Covid-19 patients, says an A*Star spokesman.

A virus' unique genome serves as a "fingerprint" to distinguish it from other viruses. By comparing the genome of the virus causing Covid-19 with that of other viruses, scientists were able to identify parts of the genetic code that were unique to Sars-CoV-2.

These differences allowed scientists to develop diagnostic tests, such as those in the Fortitude Kit. These tests work by flagging the unique parts of the viral genome in a person's respiratory secretions through a process known as polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, chief health scientist at the Ministry of Health, says new tools - including a new serology test developed by Prof Wang - to combat Covid-19 will soon be unveiled.

A serology test, or antibody test, is different from a PCR test.

PCR tests look for the presence of viral genetic material in a sample, but a serology test detects markers of the human immune system.

Specifically, serology tests flag the presence of antibodies, which are proteins developed by the immune system to fight off bacteria or viruses in the body.

"This can be used to assess if a patient had been recently infected, and will be also very helpful in assessing the extent of community exposure to Covid-19 infections," says Prof Tan.

Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, programme leader for infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, says the test will not pick up an infection in someone who has just been infected, because antibodies are produced only between days 10 and 14 of the illness.

Antibody testing is also not foolproof, as some 5 per cent of the people who have been infected with the coronavirus disease do not develop antibodies, he says, adding that serological tests are being evaluated here.

Because there are so many parameters to consider - from the type of drug to the ways the drugs can be combined and in varying doses - it is a task that can sometimes feel like searching for a nail in 10 galaxies, says Professor Dean Ho.

While the presence of antibodies may be indicative that a person has recovered from Covid-19, it is not clear if they protect against the disease for sure.

For instance, there have been reports that South Korea is seeing a growing number of recovered Covid-19 patients who relapsed.

A successful coronavirus vaccine, on the other hand, would confer immunity, and developing this is the subject of research worldwide.

Billionaire Bill Gates, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding seven Covid-19 vaccine candidates, recently said a coronavirus vaccine could be manufactured at scale in just a year.

There are now at least 76 vaccine candidates and, in Singapore, the Duke-NUS Medical School has tied up with Arcturus Therapeutics in the United States to develop one, based on a new way of making a vaccine. Clinical trials are expected to start by August.

In the meantime, groups of scientists are studying how infected patients could be better treated. This includes efforts across the local research ecosystem to look at the use of repurposed drugs and explore various drug combinations that might prove to be an effective cure, says A*Star.

Professor Dean Ho, director of the N.1 Institute for Health and the Institute for Digital Medicine at NUS, is working with a collaborator to leverage artificial intelligence in the search for the best combination of drugs in the best doses to treat Covid-19 patients.

Because there are so many parameters to consider - from the type of drug to the ways the drugs can be combined and in varying doses - it is a task that can sometimes feel like searching for a nail in 10 galaxies, he says.

Enter IDentif.AI (pronounced Identify), a platform that can rapidly optimise drug regimens for infectious diseases.

The platform uses a pool of 12 carefully selected drugs - including the ritonavir and lopinavir combination used to treat HIV patients - to figure out the optimal dosage of drugs that can be used in combination for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

There are multiple ways that drugs can work, Prof Ho explains.

One, the drug could have a direct effect on the virus. For example, it could stop a virus from replicating in the body. But there may be limits on how high a dose can be administered to a patient, because of factors such as how toxic the drug is, for example.

Two, in a cocktail of medicine taken by a patient, a drug could also help by reducing the side effects caused by another drug in the mix. Or, it could work by reinforcing the positive effects of another drug.

Prof Ho, who is also head of the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering, says: "Biology is complex and drug interactions can be unpredictable. But AI allows us to interrogate and study huge parameters in a short span of time."

IDentif.AI could soon be used to rank the best drug combinations and dosing for Covid-19 patients, he says.

"And with the results, we will follow up with potential clinical collaborators in Singapore to potentially roll out a drug trial involving an AI-optimised combination of drugs, which may be a world's first."

Singapore's ability to respond rapidly with technology-driven solutions to the Covid-19 pandemic was possible only because of consistent investment in the nation's research, innovation and enterprise ecosystem, says NRF.

"Without the investments we made years ago, we would not have these capabilities today," says the spokesman.

"It is thus important that we continue to invest in building new capabilities today, so that we will also have the capacity to deal with the emergencies of tomorrow."

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Medical, tech investments pay off in Covid-19 war - The Straits Times

Welcome to the kingdom of the sick – Salon

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In January I started teaching a course on writing and medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. As in previous semesters, I guided students through the tenets of biomedicine, stages of clinical decision-making, and some of the problematic things we say to people who are suffering from physical or psychological disorders like suggesting that cancer survivors can "win the fight" by adopting a positive attitude.

Then, in mid-March, the unthinkable happened. Ironically, there's nothing more apt than a global pandemic to make a theoretical examination of illness into a real one.

Suddenly, the twelve of us eleven undergraduate and graduate students and me, a professor trained in the field of medical rhetoric were learning from afar. Through posts on our shared learning platform, email exchanges, and conference calls, we discussed the remaining course readings, approaches to the final project, and modifications to assignments in a virtual environment. Our conversations shifted from the abstract to real-time, as we began peeling back the layers of how messages about COVID-19 were being publicly shaped in our communities and through the media.

In the process of carrying on remotely, I've witnessed my students grappling to understand the current pandemic through many of the ideas we've been exploring in the course. The connections they're identifying both confirm that what we're doing is valuable beyond the classroom, and remind me of my own journey through several health crises during the past two-plus decades.

Some would say that I'm either the luckiest person alive, having survived numerous visits to what cultural critic Susan Sontag calls "the kingdom of the sick," or the poster child for misfortune. At age 29, I was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, so named by all the things the cancer is not a tumor that tests negatively for estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and excess HER2 protein (translation: it's not as treatable as some other forms of breast cancer). At the time, I was one year into my Ph.D. program at Purdue University and underwent a mastectomy followed by several rounds of chemotherapy (including the "red devil" drug Adriamycin, known for causing recurring mouth ulcers and total hair loss while eradicating lingering cancer cells).

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At 40, I was again diagnosed with breast cancer, this time estrogen receptor-positive. While celebrating a favorable tenure decision at work and parenting two daughters aged 5 and 2, I underwent a second mastectomy followed by reconstruction and more chemotherapy.

And then, in 2019, having adopted a running habit to keep myself fit, I became exhausted after any amount of exertion. The diagnosis was a flail leaflet, leading to emergency open heart surgery to replace my mitral valve.

All of these experiences have shaped how I see the world. When a commercial for a prescription drug appears on TV, I perceive efforts to convince health consumers that some feelings and physical features are "normal" and "acceptable" while others are not. Through a process called "medicalization," we are persuaded to "fix" a "defect" like saggy skin that's part of the normal aging process for most.

Or when certain physical traits like "unwanted weight gain" are blamed for a missed promotion or an empty social calendar, I detect traces of "neoliberal health," a term coined by medical sociologists like Deborah Lupton and Robert Crawford. Accordingly, individuals are held accountable for unhealthy eating and exercise behaviors while the "obesogenic" environments in which they livespaces characterized by limited healthy food choices and minimal opportunities to be activeare ignored. And it's not just about us; a prevailing ideology of "Healthism" urges us to frame our personal inadequacies as a slight against the society that depends on us to remain healthy.

Now, with the coronavirus directly affecting their lives, my students are getting a taste of the complexity of illness and the problems associated with reducing both the etiology of COVID-19 and the continuum of experiences that stem from its arrival. Three messages, in particular, have emerged that suggest the importance of identifying the values and assumptions that underlie how we talk about the current crisis and the mistakes we're making along the way.

Ambiguity and nuance aren't our strong points.

We Americans dislike uncertainty. During the first few days, maybe even the first week or two, of self-isolation, many of us relished the opportunity to organize closets, catch up on Netflix, and test out new recipes on captive diners. But seven weeks in, we're itching to get back to our "real" lives.

One thing I learned as a cancer survivor was how to wait out the unknown. The greatest challenge? Being expected to carry on as though my foray into the "kingdom of the sick" was temporary and that, eventually, I'd return to my "real" life. Cancer was simply an unfortunate "interruption" to an otherwise healthy existence, what sociologist Arthur Frank calls the "restitution narrative."

This conventional narrative doesn't work for a couple of reasons. For one, the ambiguities of illness, especially serious illnesses, can be long-lasting. The idea that an illness is no more than an isolated incidentsomething to be endured until it is swiftly and completely remedieddoesn't account for the permanent changes that can coincide with sickness or the possibility that a body that's ill might become the new normal.

Secondly, a restitution narrative fails to account for the nuances of illness experiences. Not every "body" experiences a disease or disorder in the same way something we're seeing repeatedly in COVID-19 cases. Both young and old, sturdy and frail, are succumbing to the virus. Those without a pre-existing condition like heart disease or lupus may still end up on ventilators. Catching the virus once doesn't necessarily mean that an infected individual will be shielded from a second diagnosis. Marrielle, a student majoring in neuroscience and minoring in professional writing, told me that her uncle, a gerontologist, was distraught over early coverage of COVID-19 suggesting that the elderly are more likely to die from the virus when in fact roughly 85% of those placed on a ventilator, regardless of age, may not survive.

I've experienced firsthand the false promises of the restitution narrative that Frank criticizes for its oversimplification. At 29, a mouthful of ulcers followed each round of chemo, a painful side effect that I'm reminded of 27 years later when the ulcers return and wreak havoc on both my physical and psychological well-being.

It's often the little things that matter most. While recovering from a second mastectomy and bilateral reconstruction at age 40, I lacked the arm strength to lift my two-year-old daughter, who loved to be held, or to push my girls on swings at the park. Perhaps until you've been in someone's shoes and understand what arises during a health challenge, it's impossible to think beyond the goal of achieving restored health.

My students are now echoing this sentiment, as they talk about hunkering down at home and maintaining a safe social distance.

Audrey, a returning student with undergraduate and graduate degrees in health education and promotion, says that while the rules for living through the pandemic may be somewhat inconvenient, that's not what she finds herself focusing on.

"A couple of weeks ago, my daughters and I drove over to my parents' house outside Birmingham," she told me. "We took the lawn chairs from the trunk and set them out six feet apart in the yard."

"One of my daughters is especially close to her granddad, and gradually, I saw the two of them inching closer and closer to each other," she continued. "I kept reminding them to keep their distance, but my dad said 'if I can't spend time with my daughter and her family, what's the point of all of this?'"

Audrey's comments reframe a global pandemic as a meaningful local event. While our country might be somewhat united in facing COVID-19, we don't all experience it in the same way. To think that we do is nave and potentially dangerous because we're tempted to believe that one message for deterring individuals from "inching" too closely to others is sufficient.

For Nora, a student studying professional writing, the story that's stood out is an unrelenting focus on remaining productive.

"I know it's important to keep the economy going," she admits, "but we [Americans] seem overzealous about getting back out there and accomplishing the same amount of work remotely as we would if nothing had happened, . . . but something's happened, and that changes everything else."

The stories about the pandemic that strike me as most insightful are those that reveal individual stories. Loved ones peering through windows of hospitals and nursing homes while a grandparent, mother or father suffers alone inside. Siblings taking turns on a single home computer, depending on unreliable WiFi, all attempting to keep up with schoolwork that's been sent home, asking for help from parents who are struggling to pay the bills.

We gravitate towards dichotomous thinking when we're fearful.

One thing we can count on during a health crisis is the tendency to point fingers in ways that align with our values. The arrival of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s was attributed to the "unnatural practices" exhibited by gay men, while COVID-19, according to Trump, is a "Chinese virus" that's invaded other nations' borders.

Polarizing assumptions seem to coincide with any significant health threat. We are either well or sick, recovering or dying, at risk or impenetrable, part of the problem or part of the solution.

Simple explanations for the cause of illness and its cure are unsurprisingly dichotomous. A genetic glitch must be to blame for a young woman's diagnosis of breast cancer (not in my case). Adhering to guidelines for early detection will save her life (actually, it depends on the type of breast cancer, the tumor's grade, and stage at diagnosis). We overlook the discrepancies that make such simple claims problematic.

In the case of the coronavirus, we're encouraged to maintain a 6-foot distance from others and to don masks to protect our nasal and respiratory passageways from incoming particles. Yet experts admit that droplets can travel much farther and likely seep through masks.

We're encouraged to limit the size of gatherings. But even in small groups, there's no guarantee that those present are virus-free.

Sam, who's earning a master's degree in English with an emphasis in rhetoric and composition, told me that he's noticed coverage of COVID-19 that reflects either "narratives of shame" that call out people who aren't adhering to restrictions or "narratives of hope" that assure folks that goodness will prevail in this pandemic.

Assigning individuals to one or the other narrative as feeding the spread of the virus or championing the end of the pandemic provides a sense a control over chaos. Choose a team and give it everything you've got.

But students recognize the instability between the realms of shame and hope. Variations between how the coronavirus presents in individuals make it difficult to differentiate those who are potentially contagious from those who are deemed safe.

"It's hard to put into words," says Jada, a sophomore majoring in genetics, "but it's kind of like we're all living with one foot in 'the kingdom of the well' and one foot in 'the kingdom of the sick' because you can't tell whether somebody has the virus just by looking at them."

After receiving a bio-valve in 2019, I found myself engaging in dichotomous thinking. I'd done everything right eaten a balanced diet, stayed active, maintained a healthy weight, and so on. Why, then, had I ended up once again on the operating table when plenty of people who dine regularly on fast food and never make time for a workout were going about their lives as usual?

We don't have ultimate control regarding the kingdom in which we'll reside. According to Sontag, we'll all hold dual citizenship in both realms at some point during our lives so perhaps we're trying to stave off the inevitable.

We depend on (false) uniformity.

In Western society, healthcare is approached through a "biomedicine" model. Bodies are generalized and normalized, and deviations from the standard have historically been deemed unacceptable. One wonders how African Americans, a demographic associated with a higher rate of mortality from the coronavirus, will be construed in the narrative about COVID-19.

Hayden, a public health major with a minor in professional writing, mentions that "scare tactics," often used to urge compliance to health directives, are further evidence of a biomedical model. "Facts, alone, don't always do the trick, because people convince themselves that the numbers don't apply to them."

Despite the many unknowns in researchers' understanding of COVID-19 and how it progresses, we seek universal truths about the virus and proven methods for protecting ourselves from it. It's assumed, too, that a clear answer to the problem of coronavirus will be discovered, wrapped up in a vaccine, and made available to everyoneat least, to those who have the resources or can rely on health insurance to cover the cost. In The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, French philosopher Michel Foucault traced the evolution of the medical profession from the late 18th century onward, showing how the gaze of the physician became interwoven with the ability to "see" and "know" the body in the context of an expansive nosology of diseases.

I learned long ago not to get too caught up in a biomedical perspective on my body. Five years past the point of diagnosis didn't mean I was safe from a recurrence of breast cancer. A chemo cocktail that worked for another patient with the same diagnosis wouldn't necessarily give me the same results, and my decision to undergo a mastectomy when skin-saving lumpectomies were all the rage didn't mean I'd made the wrong choice.

Simply put, our bodies exist on a wide continuum. Diseases affect us uniquely. Epidemiologists turn to algorithmic models to predict number of cases and percentages of outcomes, but these calculations aren't absolute. That's a tough pill to swallow in a society that consistently encourages us to believe that our health depends primarily on dedicating our mindsand our pocketbooksto this end.

I'm not suggesting that we all cast aside the guidelines that have been passed down. They're the best we've got at the moment. But it's important that we listen to explanations of COVID-19 that acknowledge the complexity of this virus and its potential to affect us divergently for quite some time. Simplistic explanations and polarizing assumptions will do little to combat this pandemic.

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Welcome to the kingdom of the sick - Salon