Coronavirus

The participant who developed an unexplained illness is enrolled in a phase 2/3 trial based in the U.K., according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity. (Phase 2/3 trials look at how the immune system responds to a vaccine and whether vaccinated people have a lower chance of catching COVID-19 than unvaccinated people, while also monitoring for side effects, Live Science previously reported.) Details on the individual's illness are not yet known, but the participant is expected to recover, a person familiar with the matter told Stat News. … [Read more...] about Why AstraZeneca just paused its coronavirus vaccine trial

This snipping of muscle fibers, which could permanently damage heart cells, is scary enough in a lab dish; but the researchers found evidence that a similar process could be happening in the hearts of COVID-19 patients as well. However, the new finding, which was published to the preprint database bioRXiv on Aug. 25, has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, or proven to happen in people. … [Read more...] about Coronavirus may dice heart muscle fibers into tiny snippets, remove cells’ DNA

Editor's Note (June 2 at 11:30 a.m.): A paper discussed below has been retracted by the journal the Annals of Internal Medicine. The authors wrote that their statistical methods could not determine whether the findings were reliable, making the results of the small study "uninterpretable." The study had found that surgical and cotton masks do not effectively contain viral droplets containing SARS-CoV-2. Subsequent research has suggested that face masks are an effective method for containing the spread of the virus, used along with staying six feet apart from other people. … [Read more...] about Do face masks really reduce coronavirus spread?

Unsurprisingly, this was not the US government suddenly taking a more active role in the pandemic. It was a scam, one not particularly attuned to the Trump administration’s hands-off approach to solving the coronavirus crisis. While the links looked legit, the gov.us URL was only display text. Once clicked, the link took people to su.onamoc.comano.us, a non-government domain, then redirected to a scammy website. … [Read more...] about A new coronavirus scam targets people who’ve ‘violated quarantine’

The hold was first reported by STAT, which later found that the halt was triggered when a patient in the United Kingdom was hospitalized with severe neurological symptoms. The symptoms were apparently similar to those found in people with transverse myelitis, a kind of inflammation of the spinal cord. The patient — who is expected to recover — apparently got the vaccine as part of the trial, but that doesn’t mean the vaccine caused the illness. … [Read more...] about AstraZeneca resumes coronavirus vaccine clinical trials, but only in the UK