Tag Archives: Coronavirus insights

M-Foto/Shutterstock Rob Reddick, The Conversation Since the early days of the pandemic, attention has focused on producing a vaccine for COVID-19. With one, it’s hoped it will be able to suppress the virus without relying purely on economically challenging control measures. Without one, the world will probably have to live with COVID-19 as an endemic disease. It’s unlikely the coronavirus …

Shutterstock Alan Bradshaw, Royal Holloway Scientific analysis of COVID-19 is dominated by medical and pharmaceutical questions of vaccines and risk minimisation. But meanwhile, social scientists must track the emerging social orders where new conventions and senses of self and kinship are forming. They are finding that a brand new coronavirus culture is emerging, and with it, many unexpected questions. The …

Georgios Samaras, King’s College London In recent years, far-right political parties in Europe have capitalised on crises to build their support bases. Many have made it to positions of power as a result of these efforts. The financial crisis of 2008, the refugee crisis that began in 2014 and the ongoing debate around climate change have all provided opportunities to …

The sectors hardest hit by coronavirus are predominantly staffed by women. Michele Ursi / Shutterstock.com Rose Cook, King’s College London Chancellor Rishi Sunak won plaudits for the UK government’s furlough scheme, which helped stave off mass unemployment when vast swathes of the UK economy went into lockdown. But as the end of that initiative draws near and a new job …

Gordon Dougan, University of Cambridge Two years ago, I visited the Brazilian city of Manaus at the start of a trip through the Amazon. Since my childhood, I had been fascinated by this dot on the map that sits at the centre of the Amazon basin at the confluence of the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers. The city is ultra …

Rebecca Ashfield, University of Oxford and Pedro Folegatti, University of Oxford Of the hundreds of potential COVID-19 vaccines in development, six are in the final stages of testing, known as phase 3 clinical trials. One of these – ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 – is the vaccine we’re developing at the University of Oxford. To be approved, vaccines need to go through multiple …

Watering plants in Ethioipa: how young lives have been affected by COVID-19. © Young Lives / Mulugeta Gebrekidan Marta Favara, University of Oxford; Alan Sánchez, University of Oxford; Catherine Porter, Lancaster University, and Douglas Scott, University of Oxford For many young people around the world, the economic effects of lockdown policies have been more significant than the health impacts of …

The rush to be first. Ivan Krivenko Duncan Matthews, Queen Mary University of London The University of Oxford recently published promising news about the results from the phase one/two trials of the vaccine it is developing for COVID-19. The clinical trials, involving 1,077 volunteers in the UK aged 18-55, showed that the AZD1222 vaccine appeared to be safe and generated …