Studies into spread of the disease will centre on those working in the health and social care sectors as cases continue to rise

Swiss firm says it has US Food and Drug Administration emergency use approval for tests to detect if people have had the diseaseSwiss drug maker Roche Holding AG says it has received emergency use approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test to help determine if people have ever been infected with the coronavirus.Governments, businesses and individuals are seeking such blood tests to help them learn more about who may have had the disease, who may have some immunity and to potentially craft strategies to end lockdowns that have battered global economies. Continue reading...

The epidemic of 1918-21 is overshadowed by war and the Great Depression. But it holds lessons for us stillIt is a sobering thought that, according to the many well-researched accounts to have appeared in recent weeks, this Johnson/Cummings government seems to have been prepared to risk 250,000 deaths from the policy of “herd immunity”. This approach was, mercifully, laid to rest after the intervention of Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, on 16 March. There followed the introduction of lockdown and what some of us prefer to call “physical distancing.”Commentators have been putting the 27,000 or more deaths in this country attributed to the virus so far in the context of the 60,000 civilian deaths recorded during the second world war. This is bad enough. But I wonder how many people are aware that during the “Spanish” flu epidemic of 1918-21, which followed the first world war, the estimated loss of life in this country was, well, 250,000? Continue reading...

British Medical Association finds most doctors do not feel fully protected, and a quarter are anxious or distressed

Doctors are still exploring exactly how the coronavirus affects the body, and what its long-term impacts might beRespiratory physician Dr David Darley says something peculiar happens to a small group of Covid-19 patients on day seven of their symptoms.“Up until the end of that first week, they’re stable,” says Darley, a doctor with Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital. “And then suddenly, they have this hyper-inflammatory response. The proteins involved in that inflammation start circulating in the body at high levels.” Continue reading...

The Nobel prize-winning scientist on how the pandemic is bringing dramatic shifts in medical research

Survivors face post-traumatic stress and organ damage while even those not infected risk psychological side-effects

Time to think and be creative, and without too much socialising, is an introvert’s ideal environment. We talk to some of the people thriving under lockdownYesterday morning I spent an hour doing a jigsaw puzzle, followed by a game of Scrabble, fortified by tea and scones. For once, there was no one I had to see and nowhere I had to be. The way we live now has split us in two. For introverts, it’s largely business as usual. But for my more extroverted friends, who are clamouring for Zoom calls to fill the gaping hole the pub has left in their lives, it’s a deeply testing time.I’m an introvert, which means I need time alone to recharge. This doesn’t mean I hate socialising, but it may well mean I will feel stressed and fatigued if I’m not left on my own for a while afterwards. Continue reading...

Many in the Outer Hebrides recoil at Michael Gove’s talk of easing restrictions early

Blood plasma from recovered patients may hold antibodies produced to fight virus

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

A summary of the biggest developments in the global coronavirus outbreak

North Korean leader had not been seen for three weeks; Ireland and India both extend lockdowns, while global markets fall due to threat of US-China trade war

FDA says drug, which appears to help some recover faster, would be available for hospitalized Covid-19 patients

Designated serving spoons, no double-dipping and individual portions have all been floated as part of a new need for safety

New data shows men admitted to intensive care with Covid-19 are also more likely to die

Germany’s top coronavirus expert says children play as big a role as adults in spread

Exclusive: test has potential to identify carriers before they become infectious

Scientists cast doubt on the Trump-backed theory that the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab

The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the effects of government neglect on Britain’s once-trailblazing public health strategiesIt’s difficult to imagine that Britain was, until very recently, regarded as a leader in preparing for pandemics. Countries such as Singapore once looked to the UK for lessons in how to prepare for and respond to outbreaks. Now, it’s the other way around. With its number of coronavirus cases exceeding 170,000, and deaths set to climb above 40,000, the UK appears to be playing catch-up with the rest of the world.Britain’s failure to shatter the coronavirus curve couldn’t be further out of step with its past reputation as a leader in this area. The UK’s global health strategy, launched under New Labour in 2008, was a game-changer in the field of global health. The strategy identified how, in an interconnected world, an infectious outbreak in another country was a direct threat to the UK. By building health capacity elsewhere in the world, the government recognised that it could protect its own borders from infectious outbreaks – reflecting the Blairite logic that interventions abroad would bolster security at home. Continue reading...

People tell of symptoms coming and going weeks after falling ill, even in mild cases

Contact-tracing is considered crucial to get the US back on track. California is one of the first to take the challenge on

We should focus on the areas where infection is most likely – and liberate the countryside, playgrounds and pub gardens

Langstone, Hampshire: She guards a clutch of 40 eggs with a maternal care that is unusual among insectsHidden away in a damp, shady corner at the foot of my fence, a half-metre-high heap of logs and leaves has rotted down to rich humus, the few remaining tree stumps and branches pitted with insect boreholes.As I turn over a partially buried tunnel of bark, woodlice scatter, a cluster of garden and brown-lipped snails shrink back into their banded shells, and a common cryptops centipede scuttles for cover. Continue reading...

Some firms shifting production away from malaria, HIV and TB, which kill millions

Dr Rick Bright says he was removed as head of office working on a Covid-19 vaccine for refusing to boost hydroxychloroquine

Exclusive: St Vincent’s in Sydney is the only confirmed location so far, as NSW Health negotiates with US pharmaceutical giant Gilead

This blog is now closed.

Alabama company Dynetics also chosen for moon landing project, as three firms prepare to competeNasa has selected three private space companies to lead the development of lunar landers for its forthcoming moon landings.The three companies are Blue Origin, owned by Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos; Elon Musk’s SpaceX; and Dynetics, based in Huntsville, Alabama, Nasa announced on Thursday. Continue reading...

Telescope has made substantial scientific contributions to almost every branch of astronomyThis year, the Hubble space telescope is celebrating its 30th anniversary in orbit. Launched on 24 April 1990 onboard the space shuttle Discovery, it was deployed into orbit a day later.Since then, Hubble has been extraordinarily successful, making substantial scientific contributions to almost every branch of astronomy. Continue reading...

Rather than admit responsibility for being behind the curve, ministers instead seek to delegitimise the media for asking questions about why Britain failedIbsen’s 19th-century play An Enemy of the People is a political drama about a physician who tries to save his town from water pollution only to wind up as a scapegoat. For the doctor the issue is health; after testing the water supply he urges a shutdown and new pipes to be laid to save lives. The town’s mayor is concerned about the economic cost. Better, the politician reasons, to keep the town open and correct the problem gradually. In the moral combat that ensues it is the doctor who becomes alienated from the town he struggled to protect. The play’s message is a counsel of democratic despair: that might is more powerful than right.This insight has not been lost on the British government. Like Ibsen’s fictional politician, ministers refused to see the viral threat. Boris Johnson did not want to contemplate a draconian response. When they did act, ministers found they were behind in a global race for critical resources such as ventilators, testing capacity and personal protective equipment. The failure to move decisively to suppress the pandemic lies at the root of the mess. Rather than admit responsibility for being behind the curve, ministers refuse to apologise and instead seek to delegitimise the media for asking questions about why Britain failed. Continue reading...

One figure in particular is being closely scrutinised as ministers decide when to end lockdownR, or the “effective reproduction number”, is a way of rating a disease’s ability to spread. It’s the average number of people on to whom one infected person will pass the virus. For an R of anything above 1, an epidemic will grow exponentially. Anything below 1 and an outbreak will fizzle out – eventually.At the start of the coronavirus epidemic, the estimated R for coronavirus was between 2 and 3 – higher than the value for seasonal flu, but lower than for measles. That means that each person would pass it on to between two and three people on average, before either recovering or dying, and each of those people would each pass it on to a further two to three others, causing the total number of cases to snowball over time. Continue reading...

Trial of remdesivir shows fewer deaths and shorter hospital stays

Home testing kits will be sent out next week to clear up ‘Wild West’ of Covid-19 estimates

It’s tempting to try to construct a league table, but we’ll have to wait months, if not years, for the true picture

My wife, Eva Wickham, who has died aged 76, worked for the Inner London Education Authority in Lambeth as an educational psychologist for two decades from 1971. When Ilea was abolished in 1990, she moved to Wandsworth’s educational psychology service, where she remained until her retirement in 2006.She had a deep aversion to doing nothing and in retirement she soon found herself chairing the governing body of a local primary school. Throughout her adult life Eva was involved in various charity projects, usually involving children. She was a trustee for Cave, a literacy project in Clapham, worked as a volunteer breast feeding counsellor for the National Childbirth Trust and, most recently, was a trustee for Lambeth Home Start. Continue reading...

Attendance of Demis Hassabis raises further questions about secretive group advising UK government on Covid-19

I feel powerless but also hopeful, and want to say thank you to all my hospital colleagues from consultants to cleaners

Latest figures from public health authorities on the spread of Covid-19 in the United Kingdom. Find out how many confirmed cases have been reported near you

Stress can affect the quality and length of sleep. Scientists have been collecting dream data during the coronavirus crisis, with surprising resultsFrom going to bed too late thanks to endless scrolling through theories about the pandemic, to waking up in the night worrying, it is safe to say that Covid-19 is wreaking havoc with our sleep. A major survey conducted by King’s College London with Ipsos Mori showed that two in five people in the UK have reported sleep disturbance. Prof Bobby Duffy, the research lead and director of the Policy Institute at King’s, says: “There is a clear relationship between increased stress and impact on sleep; 53% of those who said they found the crisis stressful reported sleep difficulties.” But many people around the world are also experiencing a new phenomenon: pandemic dreams.Most of us don’t often remember our dreams, but the anxieties of life in isolation and disruption to our normal sleep-wake cycles seem to be changing that. Several researchers are collecting dream data during the pandemic, including Dr Deirdre Barrett, a clinical and evolutionary psychologist at Harvard Medical School. She explains that, although it seems that we are dreaming more often, we are actually remembering them better because we’re sleeping more, but also waking up more during the night. “With more options to sleep, including napping in the day and longer lie-ins, dream recall is maximised, but you have to wake up out of a dream to remember it. We know that increased stress is a cause of waking frequently during the night.” Continue reading...

A summary of the biggest developments in the global coronavirus outbreak

Sarah Boseley talks to Prof Helen McShane about why there has been interest in the tuberculosis vaccine and whether it could play a role in protecting us against Covid-19 Continue reading...

The Zen neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Palermo, feels abandoned by the government — and the mafia have moved inAlongside the postcard-perfect images of Italy’s silent and deserted Renaissance squares under lockdown, there are the filthy streets of the Zen neighbourhood on the northern outskirts of Palermo. In one of the poorest districts in Europe, a stronghold of the local mafia, there appears no light at the end of the tunnel despite Italy being set to begin its route out of lockdown from next week.Unemployment skyrocketed in the Zen – built in the 1960s as the city’s Zona Espansione Nord and falling into dilapidation in the decades after – when retailers were forced to close in order to contain the spread of Covid-19. Continue reading...

Friends and colleagues pay tribute to gifted polymath whose achievements spanned biology, physics and public policy

Schools in Turkey to stay shut until end of May; Germans urged to stay home; Vietnam says it has had no domestic transmission for two weeks. This blog is now closed

Preliminary results of US government trial show patients who received drug recovered faster than othersHopes of an effective drug treatment for coronavirus patients have risen following positive early results from a trial of remdesivir, a drug first tried in Ebola patients.Data from the trial on more than 1,000 severely ill patients in 75 hospitals around the world show that patients put on the drug recovered 31% faster than similar patients who were given a placebo drug instead. Remdesivir cut recovery time from a median of 15 days to 11. Continue reading...

Study says volunteers reported a rapid reduction in desire without impaired self-controlThe risk of some men sexually abusing children could be quickly reduced by a drug that lowers testosterone levels, researchers have found.The team behind the project, which was put up for crowdfunding four years ago, said the drug – degarelix acetate – produced the results in men with paedophilic disorder in just two weeks. The drug was developed as a treatment for prostate cancer treatment and blocks the production of testosterone. Continue reading...

The government’s early approach to the Covid-19 crisis, despite its denials, was to let the disease spread

Making chutney | Lockdown marmalade | Father Jack and Trump | Mathematical fright | Morse code clappingFor years I have used a WI friend’s recipe for chutney (The power of pickles: a guide to preserving almost everything – from jam-making to chutneys, 28 April) – equal weights of onions, apples (eaters or cookers), dates, sultanas and brown sugar, chopped up into a bowl and covered with vinegar for 24 hours, stirred and put into jars. No stinking the house out with boiling, no freezing or refrigerating, and delicious chutney. Even easier than making marmalade with tins of prepared fruit.

Alan Finkel joins other academics who are concerned some trials of Covid-19 treatments are being reported prematurely