Young Researchers Award

Common SARS-CoV-2 mutation may make COVID-19 more susceptible to a vaccine

2020-11-16

Mutation is not expected to interfere with effectiveness of vaccines under development. A common strain of coronavirus has mutated to help it spread quickly, but the spike mutation may make SARS-CoV-2 more susceptible to vaccines under development, according to a new study. The new strain of coronavirus, called D614G, emerged in Europe and has become the most common in the world. Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows the D614G strain replicates faster and is more transmissible than the virus, originating in China, that spread in the beginning of the pandemic. There were bright spots in the study findings: While the D614G strain spreads faster, in animal studies it was not associated with more severe disease, and the strain is slightly more sensitive to neutralization by antibody drugs.

NCDC launches probe after first bird flu death reported in country

2021-07-22 - 2021-07

New Delhi: The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)’s surveillance unit in Haryana has launched an epidemiological investigation after an 11-year-old boy from Gurugram was reported as the country’s first documented case and death of bird flu (H5N1) in humans.

Live Covid Updates: China Rejects Renewed W.H.O. Investigation on Virus Origins

2021-07-22 - 2021-07

Chinese officials said on Thursday that they were shocked and offended by a World Health Organization proposal to further investigate whether the coronavirus emerged from a lab in Wuhan, exposing a widening rift over the inquiry into the origins of the pandemic. Senior Chinese health and science officials pushed back vigorously against the idea of opening the Wuhan Institute of Virology to renewed investigation after the W.H.O. director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, laid out plans to examine laboratories in the central city of Wuhan, where the first cases of Covid-19 appeared in late 2019. Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the Chinese National Health Commission, said at a news conference in Beijing that he was “extremely shocked” at the W.H.O. plan to renew attention on the possibility that the virus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. “I could feel that this plan revealed a lack of respect for common sense and an arrogant attitude toward science,” Mr. Zeng said. “We can’t possibly accept such a plan for investigating the origins.”