The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic provides a comprehensive investigation, analysis, and response to COVID-19. The Commission delivers a number of recommendations that are divided into three main areas. First, practical steps to finally control and understand the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, realistic, feasible, and necessary investments to strengthen the first line of defence against emerging infectious agents in countries by strengthening health systems and widening universal health coverage. Third, ambitious proposals to ignite a renaissance in multilateralism, integrating the global response to the risk of future pandemics with actions to address the climate crisis and reversals in sustainable development.
This Commission report aims to contribute to a new era of multilateral cooperation based on strong UN institutions to reduce the dangers of COVID-19, forestall the next pandemic, and enable the world to achieve the agreed goals of sustainable development, human rights, and peace that governments are committed to pursue as members of the UN. We address this Commission report to the UN member states, the UN agencies and multilateral institutions, and multilateral processes such as the G20 and the G7. Our aim is to propose guideposts for strengthening the multilateral system to address global emergencies and to achieve sustainable development. In issuing this report, we commend the excellent work of many important international studies that have preceded our own, most notably those from the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons on Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
Published Online 14 September 2022
Volume 8, Issue 4, October-December 2022
Published 2022
Published 2022
Simple numbers to fight anti-vaccine misinformation, comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
Here is a relatively simple way of giving people important context about the number of deaths and ICU hospitalisations with Covid between vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
"However, when . . . put into context as proportions of the total number of people in the state, the protective effect of vaccines is obvious."
Nick Evershed, 27 Jan 2022
United States, 09 July 2021
Portable Air Cleaners and Masking
Published 06 October 2021
By Chris Beyrer
Published 25 February 2021
Review of indoor air sampling for virus detection
Indoor air quality is a public health issue.
COVID has taught us that clean indoor air is needed, especially in libraries and school classrooms.
Corsi-Rosenthal boxes are the top of the curve for DIY air purifiers.
Science in Action: How to Build a Corsi-Rosenthal Box
Biocidal agents and disinfectants against monkeypox virus
Household cleaning and disinfection information Monkeypox
In this Argonne Director's Special Colloquium, researchers from multiple institutions discuss the national response to COVID-19 including how decades of mRNA research contributed to the development of effective vaccines against the disease.
Argonne National Laboratory Colloquium
COVID-19 is known to cause multi-organ dysfunction1-3 in acute infection, with prolonged symptoms experienced by some patients, termed Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC)4-5. However, the burden of infection outside the respiratory tract and time to viral clearance is not well characterized, particularly in the brain3,6-14. We performed complete autopsies on 44 patients with COVID-19 to map and quantify SARS-CoV-2 distribution, replication, and cell-type specificity across the human body, including brain, from acute infection through over seven months following symptom onset. We show that SARS-CoV-2 is widely distributed, even among patients who died with asymptomatic to mild COVID-19, and that virus replication is present in multiple extrapulmonary tissues early in infection. Further, we detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in multiple anatomic sites, including regions throughout the brain, for up to 230 days following symptom onset. Despite extensive distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in the body, we observed a paucity of inflammation or direct viral cytopathology outside of the lungs. Our data prove that SARS-CoV-2 causes systemic infection and can persist in the body for months.
20 December 2021
Michael Kalafatis,The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine, Volume 6, Issue 5, September 2021, Pages 1099–1104.
Participants who complete the training will have an understanding of the basic and applied biology of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learners are introduced to core concepts in virology, immunology, and public health in order to comprehend COVID-19 infection, disease and prevention. After successfully completing the 9 sessions participants will have basic knowledge on the COVID-19 pandemic to make them better consumers of health information.
The webinar is divided into nine sessions of ten minutes or less. Each session addresses a central question or questions relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sessions begin with basic concepts and build to relevant COVID-19 information.
"In summary, we present a murine model of SARS-CoV-2–induced, rapidly developing systemic toxicity that involves multiple organs, causes severe morbidity and near organismal demise, and recapitulates many clinical phenotypes that are associated with a poor prognosis in humans with COVID-19. Our observations shed insight on the role of metabolic and epigenetic reprogramming in the pathogenesis of multiorgan involvement and lethality in COVID-19."
25 January 2021
Retracted coronavirus (COVID-19) papers
We’ve been tracking retractions of papers about COVID-19 as part of our database. Here’s a running list, which will be updated as needed. (For some context on these figures, see this letter in Accountability in Research and the last section of this Nature news article. Also see a note about the terminology regarding preprint servers at the end.)
Last updated 02 August 2021
Welcome to Dear Pandemic, a website where bona fide nerdy girls post real info on COVID-19. They are committed to facts.
Early Release / July 2, 2021 / 70
William G. Lindsley, PhD1; Raymond C. Derk, MS1; Jayme P. Coyle, PhD1; Stephen B. Martin Jr., PhD2; Kenneth R. Mead, PhD3; Francoise M. Blachere, MS1; Donald H. Beezhold, PhD1; John T. Brooks, MD4; Theresa Boots, MS1; John D. Noti, PhD1
These findings suggest that portable HEPA air cleaners can reduce exposure to SARS-CoV-2 aerosols in indoor environments, with greater reductions in exposure occurring when used in combination with universal masking.
UPDATE: An air cleaner sizing tool (downloadable excel spreadsheet) is now available to size portable air cleaners for use in a school classroom.
15 June 2020
Martin Z. Bazant and John W. M. Bush
PNAS April 27, 2021 118 (17) e2018995118
CO2 is co-exhaled with aerosols containing SARS-CoV-2 by COVID-19-infected people and can be used as a proxy of SARS-CoV-2 concentrations indoors.
Environ. Sci. Technol. Lett. 2021, 8, 5, 392–397, Publication Date: 5 April 2021
Environmental Science & Technology Letters
Jorgen Jensen (Earth Observing Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research)
American Physical Society March Meeting 2021
APS Session C58: Physics of COVID-19
Air-cleaning devices that claim to remove SARS-CoV-2 have hit shelves, backed by varying levels of data.
12 March 2021
Between now and when vaccines are widely available countries will face some hard choices
2 January 2021
By Lawrence Wright, 28 December 2020
It's clear we didn't know everything in February 2020. There's a lot we knew, but didn't become public.
Interview of David Quammen, author of Spillover: Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
27 December 2020
By Rachel Riederer
11 December 2020
In May, Ecuador’s coalition of indigenous governments, confeniae, launched an online dashboard to track cases of the disease in indigenous communities and identify outbreaks so that medical brigades, PCR tests, and emergency kits could be directed to the places that needed them.
The world is now dealing with a different type of SARS-CoV-2 than the one that emerged in China almost a year ago, with mutations creating at least seven strains of the virus so far.
10 December 2020
The risk of catching the coronavirus is much higher indoors.
by OLGA KHAZAN
20 NOVEMBER 2020
The COVID-19 Town Hall Series is free and open to the public. Each session features a diverse panel of experts and will focus on different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on our communities. You can join the Zoom link below and watch past sessions.
https://www.mtu.edu/health-research/covid19townhall/
ACS Publications shares this Virtual Issue that features a collection of articles on coronavirus research, updated regularly. Chemistry has a key role to play in understanding everything from viral structure to pathogenesis, isolation of vaccines and therapies, as well as in the development of materials and techniques used by basic researchers, virologists and clinicians.
The Sigma Xi COVID-19 Preparedness Kit consists of tools and resources that will help manage the challenges of social distancing.
Here are links to free or low-cost resources to use during the COVID-19 outbreak, including personal and professional development courses, tips for homeschooling children, and entertainment websites, e.g., free online concerts, museum tours, and interactive experiences.
The Preparedness Kit also includes key scientific information about the outbreak as well as the latest research on COVID-19.
Science 24 Nov 2020
A long-standing question in infectious disease dynamics concerns the role of transmission heterogeneities, driven by demography, behavior and interventions. Based on detailed patient and contact tracing data in Hunan, China we find 80% of secondary infections traced back to 15% of SARS-CoV-2 primary infections, indicating substantial transmission heterogeneities. Transmission risk scales positively with the duration of exposure and the closeness of social interactions and is modulated by demographic and clinical factors. The lockdown period increases transmission risk in the family and households, while isolation and quarantine reduce risks across all types of contacts. DOI: 10.1126/science.abe2424
Transmission heterogeneities, kinetics, and controllability of SARS-CoV-2 | Science (sciencemag.org)
The confined, poorly ventilated experimental chamber could be seen as a worst-case scenario: The authors suggest that the risk of transmission during short exposure times would be smaller in larger, better ventilated indoor spaces. (S. H. Smith et al., Phys. Fluids 32, 107108, 2020.) 05 November 2020
31 October 2020
27 October 2020
This site features expert, industry-specific guidance for both businesses and consumers to safely re-open and re-engage as they emerge from the COVID-19 quarantines.
Global to local maps and tables of Contagion Risk, Infection State, Weekly New Cases, Weekly New Deaths, Cases/100K, Deaths/100K, Cases, Deaths. Zoom to view more details or click on a locationto view details.
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The production of infectious aerosols can vary wildly between individuals and experts are exploring why in the COVID-19 era.
27 October 2020
The production of infectious aerosols can vary wildly between individuals and experts are exploring why in the COVID-19 era.
13 October 2020
Kiki Sanford, producer and host of the This Week in Science podcast, interviews David Deamer, University of California-Santa Cruz. COVID-19 Pandemic: An Evolutionary Perspective.
12 October 2020
23 September 2020
Community immunity: A situation in which a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness) to make its spread from person to person unlikely. Even individuals not vaccinated (such as newborns and those with chronic illnesses) are offered some protection because the disease has little opportunity to spread within the community. Also known as herd immunity.
10 April 2020
Bourouiba L., JAMA. 2020;323(18):1837 1838.doi:10.1001/jama.2020.4756
Control, elimination, eradication and re-emergence of infectious diseases: getting the message right
February 2006