Antivirals and gene therapy most promising strategies for defeating coronavirus

WNM | Apr 27, 2020 at 8:39 AM

In a new study in Frontiers in Microbiology, experts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill review possible strategies against dangerous coronaviruses. They propose that the most promising approaches for fast progress are selected antivirals such as remdesivir, and gene therapy.

sewage (Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash)

Coronavirus detected and monitored in wastewater

WNM | Apr 25, 2020 at 8:34 AM

Known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), the method mines sewage samples for vital clues about human health. It can potentially identify levels of coronavirus infection at both a local and global scale.

Biosensor to measure COVID-19 concentration in the air

WNM | Apr 23, 2020 at 7:57 AM

A team of researchers from Empa, ETH Zurich and Zurich University Hospital has succeeded in developing a novel sensor for detecting the coronavirus. In future it could be used to measure the concentration of the virus in the environment – for example in places where there are many people or in hospital ventilation systems.

Google Search (PhotoMIX Ltd. from Pexels)

Google trends as a proxy for COVID-19 incidence and deaths

WNM | Apr 21, 2020 at 8:04 AM

Search terms related to COVID-19 are highly correlated with the trends in COVID-19 daily incidence and deaths in the U.S. The prediction-models based on the search interest trend reached moderate to good accuracies.

Stanford data suggests COVID-19 has same infection fatality rate as seasonal influenza

WNM | Apr 20, 2020 at 1:34 PM

STANFORD, April 19 (WNM/Stanford University) – A serological study by Stanford University (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1) found antibodies in 50 to 85 times more people than previously thought in Santa Clara County, California, resulting in a COVID-19 lethality of 0.12% to 0.2% or even lower.  In a new video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGUgrEfSgaU), John P. A. Ioannidis, Professor in Disease Prevention […]