You would like any information on the coronavirus or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you get your podcasts you can also find us at. Science. A strong testing regime plays a key role in slowing the spread of covert 19 but getting tested can be a major challenge. C and waiting for the results the sample has to get to the lab and by that can take up to 4 days that is much too long to stop a pandemic and. Several nations are developing rapid tests that turn out results within minutes. But experts are concerned about the. Accuracy. No one wants to be ushered into a false sense of security thinking they havent got the corona virus but are spreading it and its a pain to think you do have it when you do it and go to all the trouble of total quarantine thats why these new rapid tests could be a blessing but could they also be a curse. As a journalist i mean quite a lot of people and some of them maybe corona positive so today i want to try out the new antigen test. And why theyre very big and i would like you buy an antigen deliver for family trade i cant sell you the test as things stand it can only be given out to medical staff so you dont qualify you cant test yourself you simply have to go to the doctors and its kind of. After this initial setback i find a doctor whos willing to let me do the test myself not the standard procedure yet. This is this is the packet containing the antigen quick test i only got a week ago so i have to read the instructions too and theres also a small sterile swab here no not a mile and if you cant get your tongue time far enough you can use a stick to help if you can take. Care. Not that easy but for me definitely doable have you done both sides have yes left and right afterwards the swab goes into a liquid which is then dripped on to the test. One line means negative 2 means positive. So its pretty clear the test is showing a negative result. Sibylla katzenstein things everyone should have a test like this at home. And it would be great for a mum for example whose child wakes up feeling sniffly but she isnt sure and is wondering whether she can take the child to school and go to work herself. If patients have access to a simple test they could do at home that will do use the pressure on doctors and laboratories and it would help a lot of people to decide what to do. But critics say the test is not sufficiently reliable heres how laboratory and tests compare. When a person gets infected with coverage 19 the virus load in the body starts to flow increasing rapidly in the 1st days and then decreasing as time passes irregular lab test can detect the virus early on but very little virus load the entity and test can only detect the virus later and the load is higher so does that mean i could actually still be positive despite having a negative result i asked a lab expert when he was asked if the viral load in the throat is not high enough to begin by the test that might result in a false negative and its the same if this was not done properly. The antigen test and fast way of testing. The tests is a sensitive and can completely. And to do tests can replace tasks that they can be of great help in the fight against 90. Martin burke has been helping develop an adage and based test at the university of illinois he says it allows for fast and frequent testing on a large scale and is safe 1st of all how does it work. Thanks just to clarify the test that were currently using is a p. C. Rbs test a saliva test at the university of illinois that was developed to skip arnie isolation so its fast and scalable results are within hours and i think its important to point out this is different than the antigen test or working on antigen tests here youre not roll those out yet in the laboratory. Is it also completely different to an Antibody Test which would only tell you if youve had an infection not if youre actually infectious correct our test is looking for the virus in your saliva so we look for 3 genes from the virus its a quick direct from saliva to p. C. R. Assaye so allows us to detect whether that tell you the number of copies per milliliter of the virus in your saliva what makes it safe so the key is that the little detection is very low so we pick up 5028000 copies per mil weve been now testing about 50000. 00 people twice per week over the course of the last several months more than half a 1000000 tests have been performed and what we see is that people go from negative negative negative and then when they flip positive we can see it at very low viral loads so we think we can catch people before they infect others so it sounds extremely accurate all precisely how accurate would you say it is. Thats very accurate were looking at 3 genes at the same time and for the positive test we go ahead and repeat them very quickly just to make sure so we believe we have a very high level of accuracy both for positives and negatives which is critical when applying on scale with 50000 people we can have a lot of false positives or false negatives otherwise its very difficult to make the system work exactly because false negatives of what will implode any testing system and and weve already seen examples in countries where theyve stocked up on these rapid test sets but theyve been antibody based tests and thats basically backfired on them well i think what we need to learn to do is figure out how to use each type of test in the right setting right so theres a very challenging problem and we have to figure out the best way to use different tests in different situations to maximize protection against spread in a community we think now that we have a system working with the saliva based test comparing that test directly to these new editing tests head to head would be a really good way to find out whether they could provide the same level of protection of the test that were using a month and i guess the question everyones going to be asking themselves is is this going to be a game changer i hope so and i think we need to figure out how to use the intelligent tests so that we are not giving ourselves a false sense of security i think we have to understand the limitations every test has limitations and we just need to i think better understand when is the right time to use which test and to understand the limitations so that we dont give ourselves a false sense of confidence but one thing i would just say no matter what test were using we have to wear masks and social distance noticed will allow us to stop doing that and thats really important and the limitations in this case that you need actual Trained Personnel to conduct these tests these on tests that one can do just at home. Correct our test is done in a laboratory the other saliva collection is done in tents you just walk through in 5 minutes and dribble saliva into a 2 but then the rest of it is done absolutely you know in a laboratory setting. Even mention this wont be the only solution in fighting off the corona virus is it going to take other types of tests and other approaches to see that we do battle this battle off this so fight off this pandemic absolutely i think we need all hands on deck and we need to continue to innovate and find new ways to detect the virus obviously we need a safe and very effective vaccine we continue to need better and better treatments to make sure that people who get sick dont actually die or have long term secretely in the hospital and we all need to continue to do our part obvious this extraordinary challenging time we need to hang in there and continue to be safe and make smart choices about how we socialize and wear masks and social distance it works and we need to keep those vigilant in place and before i let you go over what sort of timescale are you a timeline to youre looking at because we are now heading into winter in the Northern Hemisphere its going to be a very challenging time i expect absolutely so were in this for the long haul the university of illinois as i mentioned weve now performed half a 1000000 test last several months are delayed Positivity Rate is 0. 24 percent and but we are not letting our guard down so we figure in this policy for a couple years and i think we all need to just kind of adapt to the new normal where we do very safe thoughtful things to help us get back to thriving as a as a society and as our economies need to you know thrive as well so its just really important that we of course think holistically thats my most Important Message its got to be a holistic approach i think in order for this or excellent thanks for joining us today thanks for having me on. Derek williams turn to take the reins science correspondent has been busy looking into your questions about the pandemic. Once dangerous is the pneumonia why not find a cure or treatment for the knee manuf instead of the virus. Pneumonia is a blanket term thats generally defined as a more or less serious inflammation of tissue in your air passages and or your lawn it can be caused by a number of different pathogens both both viral and bacterial pneumonia that cove in 1000. 00 can cause is generally initiated by the virus and cant be treated for example with antibiotics which only kill bacteria when theyre infected with source code to the cells in the small sacks in their lawns where gas exchange occurs what are called the alveoli begin to die and clog the lungs up and that can eventually lead to whats called an acute respiratory distress syndrome as the pneumonia progresses the situation can be exacerbated by the immune system causing massive inflammation which is which is supposed to help get the infection under control but which can actually make things worse so so treating more curing coronavirus pneumonia means either addressing the problem at its root which is the sars code to infection itself or somehow toning down the bodys immune response to it when it goes over the top. And now to the latest done to from over 200. 00 countries which showed new cases doubling in 26. 00 nations and increasing in another 83. 00 countries theyve stated the same level in 10 countries simply one nations have seen their new positive covered 1000 cases full another 11 huffing and 8 countries have reported no new cases for 4 weeks in a row. His the biograph showing the statistics of the last weeks the fight against corona is over when that whole chart turns blue thats going to take a while. To have you along for another about coven specials huntin physical and by finale. The number of corona infections is rather. Large groups of people are listed keeping the necessary distance home from seems impossible. Researchers say it can be done. By the flows downstream so. This coproduced the spread of the virus to morrow today. On the. Literature in the age of corona. Award winning novels. Experimenting with an online book fair. And a female poet is awarded literatures highest honor. 20. 30 minutes on d w. Look closely. Carefully and dont go soon. To do a good. Action. To discover the. Subscribe to the documentary on you tube. Crowds and busy city spaces have become a problem in times of covert 19. How can we maintain social distancing and get back as far as possible to our normal lives. D. W. Science magazine takes a look. Welcome to this edition of tomorrow today. Empty public squares deserted streets and restaurants familiar images the world over. Normally these spaces are bustling with people but its hard to imagine how we could maintain social distancing and stay safe under such circumstances. Computer simulations and risk analysis could point the way. In many parts of the world life has been returning to city streets people are travelling on trams buses and trains again but social distancing remains a priority even if its not always easy to maintain and its busier during rush hour but not like it used to be before the not too crowded social distancing is ok sometimes its a bit overcrowded you cant maintain the minimum distance with us theres quite a lot of space and people tend to stay apart while they are far apart largely negative experiences because people do as they please a lot of people arent being very careful vision for this dish. Preventing overcrowding is something these people specialize in accurate is a munich based startup made up of a team of i. T. And simulation experts. The coronavirus pandemic has brought them new challenges normally they work on emergency evacuation plans Security Concepts for bigger events and passenger flow analyses. Now theyre also working on ways to help protect passengers visitors and workers from infection with the coronavirus. I do because one of the Coronavirus Crisis has shown us that simulations are more than just the well to analyze the behavior of crowds so they can also help us figure out how to maintain a social distancing thats important in Office Buildings for example but also for ensuring passenger safety in railway stations eyes. The simulations use forecasts based on the behavior of these human avatars agents which follow Realistic Movement patterns social distancing rules have added a new twist to the calculations the agents arent supposed to get too close to each other which is hard in tight quarters. Here weve already incorporated social distancing the agents are surrounded by a green circle with a diameter of 3 meters or a radius of one and a half and. Now they all have to lean back but theres a bottleneck what would be the 1st to leave the doorways just one metre wide but youre supposed to keep a distance of 1. 5 meters some of the agents are now turning red that shows they havent been able to maintain social distancing for a certain amount of time. Which. They dont yet have specifically coronavirus related data to incorporate into their simulations who keeps their distance who tries to barge through but they can draw on many experiments with crowd behavior carried out over the years. Where every. We have pedestrians in downtown areas railway stations airports or queues outside concerts we have to know how the flow of pedestrians tends to work where do bottlenecks develop. Thats useful to know in all sorts of contexts like evacuating crowded sports stadiums or schools or figuring out whether a train station is just busy or whether its actually overcrowded. Is so far the simulations function without the fear of the coronavirus as a parameter to help the agents maintain social distancing research is looking for new ways to guide pedestrian flow. We already have queuing systems in place at entrances to supermarkets for example the kind of research were doing now draws on similar concepts. Were trying to understand and describe whats happening when people are waiting in line. Or. Those insights could help us design queuing systems in other contexts. So. Social distancing can even help to decrease queues and crowding. In railway stations and stairwells a one way system can keep pedestrians flowing smoothly. This is a huge opportunity the authorities have fast tracked cation for a Research Project that will allow us to expand the scope of our stimulator we could make a real contribution to getting life back to something more like normal. That will entail combining real life pedestrian and commuter volumes flows and 12 times with true to scale architectural data to help daily life in cities flow more smoothly. The brazilian city of minnows was hit so hard by the corona virus that it was forced to bury its dead in mass graves because symmetries couldnt keep up. But then infection rates suddenly slowed for italy even though few measures had been taken to protect people from the virus. It looked as though the city might have managed to write the 1st wave of coded 19 paradoxically due to widespread infection a phenomenon called code immunity. Sadly rising numbers now seem to say otherwise. But how can we even gauge immunity. Am i already immune some people hope a rapid Antibody Test could answer that question and potentially provide reassurance. The test involves taking a blood sample and generates a result within minutes but it doesnt detect the virus itself it shows the presence or absence of antibodies that may indicate past infection. Unfortunately there is a chance that you will test positive if you have antibodies linked to other types of corona virus including the common cold. False positives of this kind are possible. And even if the test correctly identifies antibodies against the corona virus it doesnt automatically mean that person is immune. Our bodies produce different kinds of antibodies in response to the virus but only those that actually help put it out of action offer protection the so called neutralizing antibodies to be sure you would have to perform a 2nd test to demonstrate the presence of neutralizing antibodies using real viruses in a cell culture these kinds of tests are complicated and have to be carried out and specialized lamps. So immunity can only really be shown in a follow up test but even if you do detect neutralizing antibodies specific to the corona virus one problem remains its unclear for now how long immunity actually last fall and infection. Aspects of the immune system could also explain why africa has been less hard hit by kevin 19 then feared its possible that the mean systems of People Living there are more used to coping with infections. We asked one researcher why certain parasites might be linked to milder cases of co the 19. 1 of the early dominant features is that there was ensure their survival for 10 years and longer in the body by suppressing the immune response and the prophecy is that this overshooting immune reaction that comes with severe 90 cases might be mitigated because the people who are wars and have a new unit suppressed general. Status. That these insights about parasites help us find drugs to treat kev at 19. Has long been sought to sort of carve out the beneficial parts of the immune response of a. Presage mold avoids the talking parasitic infections that this is very tricky you have to imagine that the parasite harbors about 10000 different proteins and even more of the molecules d that it cant play with in order to exist down the road system not to speak about the infection in the locality and all these things its very complicated so far. Except for a few molecules that for example. All ive been showing today. Now becomes those specific color receptors that is part of. The immune system also play a. Role in setting infections or they can be addressed by small molecules but they are still in the brutal development so we are not yet there are definitely longer. Perspectives. In the scene which seems to be moralists. Bugs bunny parasites are in the scientific spotlight some insect species are quietly disappearing. To assess the situation of 6 legged friends a german Conservation Organization is harnessing the help of the general public to keep tabs on the insect numbers. Of fine example of citizens selling us. These people are in the garden. Heres something really tiny and i meet these 2 in a