Lifeboat Foundation

“When I first heard [of these startups], I thought this was going to be bad for the field,” Ramasamy tells Inverse. “This is going to be a disservice to our patients. And more importantly, I thought there was going to be some harm involved on the patient side.”

Direct-to-consumer telehealth companies aim to provide accessible, speedy, stigma-free care for everything from erectile dysfunction to herpes — without a physical exam. However, troubled by the risks of mistakes and misdiagnoses, as well as privacy breaches, some physicians and patients have been skeptical.

Then Covid-19 hit. In a pandemic that makes a visit to the doctor riskier than ever before, telehealth has seemingly come to the rescue, promising efficient care from the safety of home.

tech2 News Staff Aug 07, 2020 13:06:46 IST

While new cases of the novel Coronavirus are still popping up in China, the country is facing yet another potentially contagious viral infection. This time, it’s jumping from ticks to people.

According to a report by Global Times, cases of the Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome (SFTS) virus first appeared in April and since then more than 37 people in East China’s Jiangsu Province have contracted with the virus and 23 people were found infected in East China’s Anhui Province. As of 6 August, around seven people have died from the infection.

Circa 2019

A common gene-editing enzyme could be used to disable RNA viruses such as flu or Ebola.

Could find the coronavirus kill switch and shut it off then let the immune system eat the remainder.

A single protein derived from a common strain of bacteria found in the soil will offer scientists a more precise way to edit RNA.

The protein, called AcrVIA1, can halt the CRISPR-Cas13 editing process, according to new research from Cornell, Rockefeller University and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center published in the journal Science July 3.

Continue reading “Listeria protein provides a CRISPR ‘kill switch’” »

Indoor-air experts think: Sure, maybe. Why the hell not? We convinced the CEO of an air filter company to give it a try.

Researchers in South Korea found that roughly 30 percent of those infected never develop symptoms yet probably spread the virus.

Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) will be awarded up to $2.1 billion by the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Defense (DoD) toward development and manufacturing of the recombinant protein-based COVID-19 vaccine being produced by the companies, they and the U.S. government said.

HHS and DoD are providing the funding as part of Operation Warp Speed—the program through which President Donald Trump’s administration has committed the nation to delivering 300 million vaccine doses protecting against SARS-CoV-2 by January 2021.

“The portfolio of vaccines being assembled for Operation Warp Speed increases the odds that we will have at least one safe, effective vaccine as soon as the end of this year,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar II stated.

It’s also worth noting that some water already naturally contains low amounts of lithium. And in research published last week in The British Journal of Psychiatry, scientists from a cohort of U.K. universities identified a link that naturally-present lithium and lower suicide rates.

Therefore, they suggest, more lives could be saved by putting the drug in high-risk communities’ water supplies.

“In these unprecedented times of COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent increase in the incidence of mental health conditions, accessing ways to improve community mental health and reduce the incidence of anxiety, depression and suicide is ever more important,” Anjum Memon, lead author and epidemiology chair at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said in a press release.

Not all vaccines for COVID-19 will cover everyone, in fact many may have large gaps. A novel, large-scale machine learning project at MIT designed one that might protect many more people.