In mutant variants, has the coronavirus shown its best tricks? japantoday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from japantoday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
(April 5): When Bette Korber, a biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, spotted the first significant mutation in the Covid-19 virus last spring, some scientists were sceptical. They didn’t believe it would make the virus more contagious and said its rapid rise might just be coincidence.
Now, 11 months later, the D614G mutation she helped discover is ubiquitous worldwide, featured in the genomes of fast-spreading variants from the UK, South Africa and Brazil. Meanwhile, new mutations are popping up in increasingly complicated patterns, spurring a drive by top biologists to devise new ways to track a fire hose of incoming genomic data.
COVID-19 mutants multiply as scientists race to decode variations gulfnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gulfnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Robert Dingwall is a professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University and a member of several Government advisory groups
These are extraordinary times, and not just because we are coming through the greatest national trauma since the Second World War.
The vaccination programme is something close to a modern miracle. There is further good news in the startling success of the treatments we are pioneering for coronavirus patients. The UK is leading the world in these areas.
Yet, as the past week has shown, the nation is facing another threat – one which is both unprecedented and deeply troubling.
We are witnessing the birth of what you might call the ‘biosecurity state’, a new world in which politicians and the scientists who advise them decide that suppressing disease is more important than the human freedoms we take for granted.
Pfizer s vaccine 91% effective in preventing Covid, updated trial data shows
Pfizer s vaccine 91% effective in preventing Covid, updated trial data shows
Updated clinical trial data shows that Pfizer and BioNTech s vaccine is 91 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19. The vaccine also showed early signs of guarding recipients against the South African variant.
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File photo of Pfizer and BioNTech s Covid-19 vaccine (Photo Credits: AP)
HIGHLIGHTS
Pfizer s vaccine is currently authorized on an emergency basis by the US FDA
The trial reviewed more than 900 confirmed cases of Covid-19
Pfizer Inc and BioNTech said on Thursday their vaccine is around 91 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19, citing updated trial data that included participants inoculated for up to six months.