Science AF

Ending Covid

It will take some time, but rest assured: a coronavirus vaccine is coming, and it will work.

The biopharmaceutical industry will be able to make a Covid-19 vaccine—probably a few of them—using various existing vaccine technologies. But many people worry that Covid-19 will mutate and evade our vaccines, as the flu virus does each season. Covid-19 is fundamentally different from flu viruses, though, in ways that will allow our first-generation vaccines to hold up well. To the extent that Covid does mutate, it’s likely to do so much more slowly than the flu virus does, buying us time to create new and improved vaccines.   (more...)

Coronavirus ‘Cure’ Claims Get FTC Warning, So Maybe Don’t Drink Silver

Companies are offering dubious cures and treatments for COVID-19, or coronavirus, as misinformation

Amongst the mess of misinformation around coronavirus, claims promising cures and treatments for the virus are rife. On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Food and Drug Administration took action, warning seven companies about their ads for products promising to help combat coronavirus.   (more...)

Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility

The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading around the world rapidly and declared as a pandemic by WHO. Here, we compared the ABO blood group distribution in 2,173 patients with COVID-19 confirmed by SARS-CoV-2 test from three hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen, China with that in normal people from the corresponding regions. The results showed that blood group A was associated with a higher risk for acquiring COVID-19 compared with non-A blood groups, whereas blood group O was associated with a lower risk for the infection compared with non-O blood groups. This is the first observation of an association between the ABO blood type and COVID-19. It should be emphasized, however, that this is an early study with limitations. It would be premature to use this study to guide clinical practice at this time, but it should encourage further investigation of the relationship between the ABO blood group and the COVID-19 susceptibility.   (more...)