Science | The Guardian

Respiratory physician John Wilson explains the range of Covid-19 impacts, from no symptoms to severe illness featuring pneumonia

What are the symptoms caused by the Covid-19 virus, how does it spread, and should you go to see a doctor?

Tests due next week will confirm whether self-isolating healthcare workers can return to work

From lending a hand to local charities to bolstering the efforts of the NHS, there are many ways to get involved

Supermarket says it will prioritise deliveries amid concern over food supplies for vulnerable people

Simon Wood on the expertise of epidemiologists, Graeme Henderson on the PPE shortage, Martin McKee, Mark Flear and Anniek de Ruijter on the EU’s ventilator scheme, Dr Jeremy Holmes on mourning a lost way of life and Dr Helen Lucas on hope in these dark times

The US president has been exposed by the coronavirus crisis. The only small comfort for the rest of the world is that he’s not their leaderPity the people of America. They do battle now with one of the greatest challenges in their history, led by a man who is not only among the worst ever occupants of the White House but whose character makes him the last person on the face of the Earth you would nominate to be in charge at this moment. On Thursday the US reached the top of the global league table for coronavirus infections, edging ahead of its closest rival for that honour, China. No law of nature dictated that outcome. Much of it is directly attributable to one dreadful fact: that Donald Trump is president of the United States.It’s become a commonplace to note Trump’s lack of basic human empathy, his tendency to be unmoved by others’ loss. But that gap in his mindset matters now far beyond an inability to offer consolation to the bereaved: it is warping his approach to a lethal disease. Continue reading...

Italy and France now prescribing hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus despite fact its effectiveness is unknown

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

Pistols from Die Another Day, Walther PPK from A View to a Kill and special chrome Magnum from Live and Let Die among items taken in burglaryAn “irreplaceable” collection of prop guns used in James Bond films has been stolen from a house in Enfield, north London.Five deactivated guns, including Beretta Cheetah and Tomcat pistols from Die Another Day and the iconic Walther PPK handgun used in A View to a Kill are among the weapons reported taken. Continue reading...

Experts warn leaders of huge social and economic consequences of failing to support developing states against ‘unprecedented threat’Economists and global health experts have called on G20 leaders to provide trillions of dollars to poorer countries to shore up ailing healthcare systems and economies, or face a disaster that will rebound on wealthier states through migration and health crises.Twenty experts, among them four Nobel prizewinners, including Joseph Stiglitz, Lord Nicholas Stern and seven chief economists of the World Bank and other development banks, have written to G20 leaders to warn of “unimaginable health and social impacts” as coronavirus rips through the developing world, taking overburdened healthcare systems beyond breaking point, and causing economic and social devastation. Continue reading...

Dr James Niven in Manchester achieved UK-wide fame during Spanish flu pandemic in 1918

Batch with only 30% detection rate was bought by health officials from Chinese supplier

Phonecall between leaders came as China prepares to seal itself off from the world to stem ‘imported’ coronavirus cases

Around the world, more than 40 teams are working on a vaccine for Covid-19. We followed one doctor in the most urgent quest of his life. By Samanth Subramanian

Bacterium is able to break down polyurethane, which is widely used but rarely recycledA bacterium that feeds on toxic plastic has been discovered by scientists. The bug not only breaks the plastic down but uses it as food to power the process.The bacterium, which was found at a waste site where plastic had been dumped, is the first that is known to attack polyurethane. Millions of tonnes of the plastic is produced every year to use in items such as sports shoes, nappies, kitchen sponges and as foam insulation, but it is mostly sent to landfill because it it too tough to recycle. Continue reading...

Restrictions would need to remain in place until a vaccine or other treatment was developed

Spain death toll passes 4,000; IMF urges G20 to double emergency funding; US now has more cases than any other country. This blog is now closed

People urged to inform social media firms if they see falsehoods shared online

NHS England medical director tells MPs tests may be available within a couple of weeksCoronavirus – latest updatesAll our coronavirus coverageSelf-testing at home to find out whether somebody has had Covid-19 is an efficient way to find out if they are safe to return to work, a senior health official has said.Prof Yvonne Doyle, the medical director of Public Health England, told the health select committee that finger-prick home tests would be available very soon. “We expect that to come within a couple of weeks, but I wouldn’t want to promise on that,” she said. Continue reading...

Discovery adds to growing evidence that Neanderthals were very similar to modern humansNeanderthals made extensive use of coastal environments, munching on fish, crabs and mussels, researchers have found, in the latest study to reveal similarities between modern humans and our big-browed cousins.Until now, many Neanderthal sites had shown only small-scale use of marine resources; for example, scattered shells. But now archaeologists have excavated a cave on the coast of Portugal and discovered a huge, structured deposit of remains, including from mussels and limpets, dating to between 106,000 and 86,000 years ago. Continue reading...

PhD and master’s students worry their funding will run out as libraries and labs shutPhD and master’s students have signed an open letter asking to be given extensions to their funding by research councils so they can finish work disrupted by the coronavirus.

Remains of agile meat-eater show raptors were thriving right up to point asteroid struck 66m years agoA meat-eating dinosaur with a feathered body, iron grip and a tail for agile pursuit of prey, has been discovered by fossil hunters, revealing that raptor dinosaurs were thriving right up to the point the asteroid struck, 66m years ago.The remains, comprising about 20 bones, were found in the San Juan Basin in New Mexico, in rocks dating to about 67m years ago. They are believed to be from a type of dromaeosaurid – a family of theropod dinosaurs that includes raptors – which appears to have been a close cousin of the velociraptor. Continue reading...

Prosecutors issue warning after reports of emergency workers being coughed and spat at

Lifting restrictions in March could lead to new peak of cases in August, study suggests

We don’t know exactly how many people have already been infected with the virus, but there’s no evidence it’s half the population• Adam Kucharski is an epidemiologist and author

Human trials will begin imminently – but even if they go well, there are many hurdles before global immunisation is feasible

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

What are the symptoms caused by the Covid-19 virus, how does it spread, and should you call a doctor in the UK?

Tokyo governor warns of measures to prevent ‘explosion’ of cases as Hong Kong health expert calls for curfew to handle cases arriving from overseas

The country already has the most deaths in south-east Asia, but research suggests the official 800 infections so far may only be 2% of the total

Nicola Davis speaks to Dr Ian Bailey about the current guidance on taking ibuprofen and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs during a Sars-CoV-2 infection. And, why there was concern about whether these medications could make symptoms of the disease worse Continue reading...

Respiratory physician John Wilson explains the range of Covid-19 impacts, from no symptoms to severe illness featuring pneumonia

India locks down; Prince Charles tests positive for coronavirus; Senate and White House reach stimulus deal. This blog is now closed

Prototype of revolutionary running device being worked on by scientists at US university

Work on the Orion capsule and the Space Launch System suspended until Covid-19 outbreak has passedWelcome to a new semi-regular column about Nasa’s progress towards landing astronauts on the moon during 2024.This challenging schedule, which was mandated by the White House, has now been made more difficult by the coronavirus outbreak. On 19 March, the Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that the agency’s Michoud assembly facility and Stennis Space Center are in effect shutting down due to the rising number of cases in their local areas. Continue reading...

Rolling updates on all the UK developments, as they happened. This blog is now closed, please follow the global coronavirus liveblog6.20pm GMTFor more coronavirus updates, do read our global coronavirus live blog.Related: Coronavirus live news: global death toll passes 20,000, as Spain overtakes China as second worst-hit country6.18pm GMTHere are the main points from Boris Johnson’s press conference. His headline announcement related to the NHS “volunteer army”, but what was equally interesting was the defensiveness that seems to be creeping in to his public statements about coronavirus. He did not have a proper answer at all to Gary Gibbon’s questions about why coronavirus testing in the UK was not as thorough as in some other countries, and he opened his statement with the words “from the very beginning of this crisis I have followed the advice of our world-leading scientists” - which did sound a little like someone starting to make excuses.Here are the main points.When we launched the appeal last night we hoped to get 250,000 over a few days.But I can tell you that in just 24 hours 405,000 people have responded to the call.We are going up from 5,000 to 10,000 tests per day, to 25,000, hopefully very soon up to 250,000 per day.This is a global problem. Basically, every country is wanting this new test for a disease that wasn’t actually being tested for anywhere three months ago. So everybody wants, so there is a global shortage, and that’s a bottleneck for us ...There are multiple components in these tests, including the chemicals that make them up, the swabs that you use, and there are shortages along many of these supply chains, essentially because every county in the world is simultaneously wanting this new thing. Some components of this are old, but the scale of this is something which has obviously occurred at an extraordinary speed. And that’s just a practical reality. Anyone who understands how supply chains work, and the huge demand for this globally, would understand that.I dislike it very much and I do not want to see people profiteering, exploiting people’s need at a critical time, in a national emergency.We are indeed looking very carefully at what is going on.I do not think, and I want to be clear, that this is something that we’ll suddenly be ordering on the internet next week. We need to go through the evaluation, then the first critical uses, then spread it out from that point of view. We need to do that in a systematic way.We have to remember that many of the things we have to do are going to have to be sustained for a reasonably long period of time. Continue reading...

Models based on assumptions in the absence of data can be over-speculative and ‘open to gross over-interpretation’

As a teenager I had chronic hypochondria. Yet in the face of a global pandemic I am surprisingly calm. Maybe it’s because we are all in this togetherI have noticed something odd about my anxiety at this time: I am not as anxious as I should be. I have been anxious for as long as I can remember: man, boy, child, baby and, for all I know, foetus. It just seems to be in my nature. I have a physical manifestation of it in the shape of a long furrow right across the middle of my brow. If I pull the skin on my forehead right back to stretch away this crevice, a white streak appears in its place. For this troubled trench is so deep that no sunlight finds a way to its depths.When I was a kid, I worried about everything. I worried whether my friends liked me, whether girls liked me and, most of all, whether West Brom would win their next game. I worried about my grandparents dying and my parents dying. And, logically enough, by the time I got to my teens I started to worry about dying myself. This manifested itself in chronic hypochondria. I was convinced I had pretty much everything at some time or other, but the main focus of my concern was my testicles. To be fair, I had nearly lost them when I was 11 in a bicycle crash at my nan’s house on the day of the 1978 cup final, but that’s another story. Continue reading...

The 15-minute coronavirus tests may provide a semblance of normality as UK regions track the spread of coronavirus• Anthony Costello is a former director of maternal and child health at the World Health Organization

Teachers in England say they are getting requests for eyewear and other protective equipment

Viruses such as Covid-19 wouldn’t emerge in food markets if it wasn’t for factory farming, globalised industry and rapid urbanisation

Although Trump’s claim about the drug was false it might play a role in tackling the pandemicClaims by Donald Trump regarding the effectiveness against coronavirus of an anti-malarial drug untested against the disease have led to it being hoarded, as well as to at least one death in the US and a number of overdoses around the world.Trump called the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine potential “gamechangers” during a press conference last week, spurring a rush by some individuals – and even countries, including Algeria and Indonesia – to stockpile the drugs. India, meanwhile, has announced it will ban export of the drug. Continue reading...

Dental tissue is revealing in same way annual tree rings can tell much about environment tree grew inTelltale signs of stressful life events can be found in our teeth, say researchers who have found that birth, menopause and even imprisonment appear to leave their mark in tissue that is laid down throughout life.The phenomenon is similar to the way the thickness of annual tree rings can tell us about the climate and environment in which the tree grew – however in teeth it is changes to the way the tissue interacts with light that offers the clues. Continue reading...

Dominic Cummings loves to theorise about complexity, but he’s getting it all wrong

Anna Ahmatova, David Malouf, Yukio Mishima and more explore the emotion that tears us apart but leads us into compassion, writes Christos TsiolkasI was an adolescent when I first came across the letters of St Paul. Though I had been raised Greek Orthodox, at 13 I had joined an evangelical church in the hope that God would banish my shame. The shame of being different. The shame of hurting my immigrant parents’ honour. The shame of being gay. At that age, all I could hear from Paul was his admonishment in his first letter to the Corinthians that my homosexuality would banish me for ever from God’s love and grace. I battled with that for over two years before finally abandoning my faith. It was a relief to declare myself atheist, and a relief to begin the slow, difficult process of extricating myself from shame.In my late 20s, however, I experienced another form of shame. I had betrayed a man I loved. I had betrayed my ideals. In a state of misery I found myself walking into a small Uniting Church. My body fell to weeping and prayer – for aid from a God in whom I no longer believed. On the pew in front of me there was a copy of the New Testament and I began to read it. I read Paul’s letter to the Romans and this time I heard the voice of a man struggling with doubt and confusion, shame and regret. And I heard his words of solace and compassion. My novel Damascus is my attempt to reconcile these two versions of Paul. It is the story of a man, not a saint, since it is the living, breathing, conflicted man who interests me. This is the man we can still hear 2,000 years later through the letters he left us. Continue reading...

UK experts say easing physical distancing would depend on rigorous testing and isolation

Human trials will begin imminently – but even if they go well and a cure is found, there are many barriers before global immunisation is feasible