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Israeli hospitals were among the first anywhere to use dexamethasone, a steroid drug, to stop cytokines storms and reduce lung inflammation in severely ill Covid-19 patients. However, steroids can suppress the immune response too strongly.

Additionally, an Israeli hospital is among the first to do a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of ivermectin, a drug to treat parasitic infections in people and animals, to see if it can shorten the duration of the disease if given to Covid-19 patients immediately after diagnosis.

Below we summarize 13 potential Israeli treatments using a variety of approaches – such as placenta-derived cells, peptides, blood plasma of recovered patients, and the cannabis compound CBD.


A new space tug, only the second-ever to extend the life of older satellites, launched into orbit Saturday on a European rocket after weeks of delays due to weather and rocket checks.

An Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket hefted the Mission Extension Vehicle-2 (MEV-2) into space Sunday (July 31), putting the vehicle en route to an Intelsat satellite waiting for a boost into a higher orbit. Riding along on the rocket were two satellites for broadband communications.

To avoid this problem, the researchers came up with several shortcuts and simplifications that help focus on the most important interactions, making the calculations tractable while still providing a precise enough result to be practically useful.

To test their approach, they put it to work on a 14-qubit IBM quantum computer accessed via the company’s IBM Quantum Experience service. They were able to visualize correlations between all pairs of qubits and even uncovered long-range interactions between qubits that had not been previously detected and will be crucial for creating error-corrected devices.

They also used simulations to show that they could apply the algorithm to a quantum computer as large as 100 qubits without calculations getting intractable. As well as helping to devise error-correction protocols to cancel out the effects of noise, the researchers say their approach could also be used as a diagnostic tool to uncover the microscopic origins of noise.