All human viruses have their origin in a virus that crossed from a different animal species. The encounters that lead to these spillovers are driven by explosive human population growth and incredible change occurring in all ecosystems brought about by human occupation of almost every corner of the planet. The extent to which land-use change …
Pandemics and anthropogenic environmental change Read More »
What does the future hold for SARS-CoV-2? Will it remain in its current configuration, with 20% of infections causing serious damage? Will everyone on Earth need to be vaccinated regularly to prevent infection? Allow me to indulge in some speculation and suggest that SARS-CoV-2 will eventually become the fifth common cold coronavirus (CoV). There are …
by Gertrud U. Rey On July 20, 2020, Oxford University’s Jenner Institute and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca reported preliminary results from phase I/II clinical trials assessing the safety and efficacy of a vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine candidate, named AZD1222 (referred to in the publication as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19), consists of an adenovirus vector with an …
Preliminary phase I/II results of ChAdOx1 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine Read More »
Most of the 172 SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development will be administered by intramuscular injection, a traditional route for many effective vaccines. In my opinion the use of needles for immunization will one day be replaced by microneedle patches, which can not only be self-administered but have a variety of other advantages compared with injection. A …
Despite recent proclamations to the contrary by WHO, there is good evidence that individuals who are asymptomatically infected with SARS-CoV-2 can efficiently spread infection to others. The levels of virus and the immune response in asymptomatically infected individuals has not been well studied to understand the infection events taking place. A recent small study provides …
Virus and antibodies during asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections Read More »
Some evidence suggests that cigarette smokers are more likely to develop severe COVID-19 disease than non-smokers. Chronic smoke exposure appears to trigger the expansion of cell types in the respiratory tract that produce ACE2, the receptor for SARS-CoV-2. This observation provides a plausible hypothesis to explain why cigarette smokers might experience more severe COVID-19. A …
