Michael Le Page, Jessica Hamzelou, Sam Wong, Graham Lawton, Adam Vaughan, Conrad Quilty-Harper, LayalLiverpool, Matt Hambly, Carissa Wong, Alex.
Workers in personal protective equipment deliver food during the ongoing covid-19 lockdown in the Jing district of Shanghai in China.
HECTOR RETAMAL is pictured.
Lifting China's zero-covid policy could cause a large wave, but the World Health Organization says the strategy is unsustainable.
According to a modelling study from Fudan University in China, scrapping China's zero-covid policy could lead to 1.5 million deaths and increase intensive care numbers by 15.
China introduced the strategy to cut off transmission to end outbreaks in August of 2021. The officials are evaluating the policy's long-term viability.
Lifting the zero-covid strategy could lead to as many as 5.1 million hospitalisations, 2.7 million intensive care unit admissions and 1.55 million deaths by September, according to a mathematical model by Fudan.
74 per cent of deaths would be made up of people over the age of 60, according to the model.
The WHO doubts whether keeping zero-covid policies in place is sustainable as the highly-transmissible omicron variant continues to drive cases in China.
The zero-covid strategy is not sustainable because of the behavior of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future, according to the WHO.
The approach will not be sustainable and we have discussed it with Chinese experts.
Transiting into another strategy will be very important.
There are other coronaviruses news.
According to a meta-analysis of 23 studies covering more than 117,000 pregnant people, pregnant people who arevaccinated against covid-19 are less likely to have a stillbirth than their unvaccinated counterparts.
The study found no evidence of an increased risk of haemorrhage or a lower birthweight when pregnant with vaccine.
According to the ministry of health in New Zealand, there are more than one million covid-19 cases. The government loosened its zero-covid strategy in March.
More than 20% of New Zealand's population is known to have been affected by the disease.
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The story of a disease.
The latest developments in the covid-19 pandemic are covered in New Scientist Weekly. The biggest science stories to hit the headlines each week include technology and space, health and the environment.
The Jump is a series on the radio about how viruses can cross from animals to humans. The first episode looks at the origins of the disease.
The high covid-19 death rates in ethnic minority patients reveal about health inequality in the UK.
The inside story of the development of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine against covid-19 is the subject of a documentary.
Race Against the Virus: Hunt for a Vaccine is a Channel 4 documentary which tells the story of the coronaviruses epidemic through the eyes of the scientists on the frontline.
The New York Times is ranking potential drug treatments for covid-19 based on their effectiveness and safety.
Humans of COVID-19 is a project that highlights the experiences of key workers in the fight against coronaviruses in the UK through social media.
The death of a transport worker at London's Victoria Station is the subject of a programme called Belly Mujinga: Searching for the Truth.
There is a short documentary series on the coronaviruses that looks at the efforts to fight it and ways to manage its mental health toll.
Stopping the Next Pandemic: How Covid-19 Can Help Us Save humanity is a book written by Debora Mackenzie about how the epidemic happened and why it will happen again if we don't do things differently in the future.
The Rules of Contagion is a book about the new science of contagion and how it shapes our lives and behavior. In his book, Adam Kucharski examines how diseases spread and why they stop.
A Moderna covid-19 booster jab is going to be prepared in London.
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A fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine provides increased protection from covid-19, according to a study.
A fourth dose of the covid-19 vaccine could provide a substantial boost in the amount of immune cells in the body, according to a study conducted as part of the University ofSouthampton's Cov-Boost vaccine trial.
There is a fourth vaccine available for people who are 75 and over. A larger group of people in the UK may be offered a second booster jab later this year.
166 participants who had received a third dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine were either given a full dose of Pfizer/BioNTech or a half dose.
The results show that the fourth jab offered higher levels of protection than a third jab and was particularly effective for people over the age of 70.
Some participants in the study maintained higher levels of immunity after a third dose and only received a small boost from a fourth jab, suggesting there could be a ceiling to the immune response.
The ceiling effect could suggest that a fourth booster shot is less effective in people with a shorter window between their third and fourth vaccine doses.
Saul Faust said in a statement that the results show the benefits of the most vulnerable people receiving current spring boosters.
There are other coronaviruses news.
There was a small but significant increase in loneliness worldwide because of Lock Downs and social distance caused by the Pandemic, according to a meta-analysis of 34 studies.
The dire warnings about aloneliness may be overblown, according to Mareike Ernst, of Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz in Germany. As loneliness is a risk for premature mortality and mental and physical health, it should be closely monitored.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that 51 percent of people who tested positive for covid-19 were following isolation guidelines in England.
The legal requirement to self-isolate after a positive covid-19 test was removed in England. In April, new isolation guidance was issued for those who tested positive, urging them to avoid contact with other people until they felt better. The rest of the UK has similar guidance.
The proportion of people who were positive for covid-19 who followed self-isolation was similar to what we reported.
An aerial view of a burial site for people who died with covid-19 in the Amazon forest in Brazil.
Michael Dantas is a photographer.
According to a WHO report, the covid-19 epidemic caused more than 13 million deaths.
The WHO calculated the number of deaths caused by the Pandemic in the period from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2022.
National death data for each country was combined with statistics from scientific studies in the same country. They used a statistical model to account for deaths that may have been overlooked.
The team estimated the number of deaths that would have been expected had the epidemic not occurred.
The excess includes deaths caused by the swine flu, as well as deaths caused by healthcare systems being overwhelmed.
Over 6 million people have died of covid-19 worldwide, not taking into account the indirect deaths.
The impact of the Pandemic and the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises are both shown by the data.
There are other coronaviruses news.
A study suggests that more than one in 10 people could have severe neurological symptoms.
More than 16,000 people were hospitalized with covid-19 in 24 countries between March 2020 and March 2021. Nearly 13 per cent of the participants developed a serious neurological condition, like a stroke, seizure or encephalopathy, an umbrella term for disease that alters the brain's function or structure.
If you fight off the SARS-CoV-2 virus, you may be able to boost your protection against other coronaviruses.
In a small study, scientists at Scripps Research in the US found that people who had recently fought off the coronaviruses reacted more strongly to spikes in their own genes than people who had not.
A stock image of a medic.
The images are from xijian.
The natural cognitive decline that occurs between 50 and 70 years old is what may cause people to lose 10 IQ points.
Covid-19 can cause long term cognitive and mental health issues. Researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed 46 people who were hospitalized due to the problem between March and July 2020.
Six months after their initial illness, the participants underwent cognitive tests. More than 66,000 people from the general population were compared with these results.
Those who were hospitalized with covid-19 scored worse on verbal analogical reasoning tests.
Slower processing speeds were also recorded. The part of the brain responsible for attention, complex problem-solving and working memory is believed to be less efficient after covid-19.
The researchers said that any recovery was gradual and that scores and reaction speeds improved over time.
This cognitive impairment probably has many causes, including inadequate blood supply to the brain, blood vessel blockage, and damage caused by an overactive immune system, they said.
Around 40,000 people have been through intensive care with covid-19 in England alone and many more will have been very sick, but not admitted to hospital, according to Adam Hampshire at Imperial College London.
There is a large number of people who are still having problems with their cognitive function many months later.
There are other coronaviruses news.
The Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia may have discovered the biological mechanism behind the rare and severe covid-19 response seen in some children.
Doctors have not been able to figure out why some children develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome in response to covid-19, which can cause symptoms such as abdominal pain and heart disease.
After analyzing the blood of 33 children with the condition, the researchers identified 85 proteins that were specific to the condition, potentially opening the door to new treatments.
According to a study of more than 61,000 people with asthma in the US, Covid-19 may make asthma worse. The participants who tested positive for covid-19 had more asthma-related hospitalisations, emergency inhaler use and steroid treatments in the six months after the infections, compared with the participants who did not test positive.
People with asthma are affected by covid-19. A study published in November 2020 found that people with asthma may be less likely to develop covid-19.
There are previous updates from April to March, February to February, January to January, November to December, September to October, July to September, and June to July.
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