Tag Archives: Coronavirus insights

symptoms Studio Romantic/Shutterstock Claire Steves, King’s College London In unvaccinated people, around one in 20 who get symptomatic COVID-19 experience symptoms for at least eight weeks. Around one in 50 have symptoms that drag out for three months or more. We wanted to know whether COVID-19 vaccines might protect against developing long-lasting symptoms. To find out, we looked at data …

Colin Angus, University of Sheffield Recently, ITV journalist Robert Peston caught COVID, despite being double vaccinated. This set Peston wondering how common it is for the fully vaccinated to get the disease. His analysis is now complete. The headline is fairly alarming: “Data shows infections high among double vaxxed for those aged 40 to 79.” Although, perhaps not as alarming …

ShotPrime Studio/Shutterstock Sarah Pitt, University of Brighton After consulting its vaccine advisers, the UK government is launching its much-discussed COVID-19 vaccine booster programme. From the week beginning September 20 2021, a third dose will be offered to all people who were prioritised in the first wave of the UK’s vaccine rollout. This includes all residents and staff of care homes, …

Paul Hunter, University of East Anglia After over 18 months of this pandemic, with the social distancing, mask wearing and on-off lockdowns, what we all want to know more than anything else is when it will all be over and how it will end. While nothing is certain, we have a lot of evidence on which to build some realistic …

Kazantseva Olga/Shutterstock Vassilios Vassiliou, University of East Anglia; Ciaran Grafton-Clarke, University of East Anglia, and Ranu Baral, University of East Anglia Two weeks after your second COVID-19 vaccine dose, the protective effects of vaccination will be at their highest. At this point, you’re fully vaccinated. If you still get COVID-19 after this point, you’ve suffered a “breakthrough” infection. Broadly speaking, …

Michael Head, University of Southampton Israel has been one of the focal points of the pandemic in 2021 owing to its rapid rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. By late February, authorities had administered at least one dose to 50% of the population, with much of Israel’s immunisation programme using Pfizer vaccines. Society then in effect reopened across the summer of 2021. …

Charlotte Thålin, Karolinska Institutet Israel was way ahead of the rest of the world when it came to COVID vaccination, so it’s not surprising that data from this corner of the Mediterranean causes a lot of excitement – it’s a glimpse into the future. Indeed, this happened recently when researchers at Maccabi Healthcare Services in Tel Aviv released a preprint …

Lightspring/Shutterstock Luke O’Neill, Trinity College Dublin The World Health Organization (WHO) has added another coronavirus variant to its list to monitor. It’s called the mu variant and has been designated a variant of interest (VOI). What this means is that mu has genetic differences to the other known variants and is causing infections in multiple countries, so therefore might present …

Michael Head, University of Southampton There have been many predictions about how many people have had COVID-19 and whether or not this or that country has reached herd immunity. We have seen this before in Manaus, Brazil, and in India. The optimism is alas always misplaced and occasionally used irresponsibly. We have seen approaches to naturally acquired herd immunity proposed …

Corona Borealis Studio/Shutterstock Lara Marks, University of Cambridge The UK medicines regulator has just approved a new COVID-19 treatment. Branded Ronapreve in the UK and REGEN-COV in the US, the drug was developed by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals with Roche. It first grabbed headlines in October 2020 when President Trump received it during his COVID-19 infection. Already licensed for emergency use in …