Mutations

LIKE A STORY-BOOK villain, the covid-19 pandemic has a habit of fighting back from the brink of defeat. Last summer politicians were quick to assume that the coronavirus had been squashed, only for a second wave to engulf much of Europe and North America in the autumn.

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Europe

Germany

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Read more about Overview of Covid-19 cases rising in much of the world--the Economist, with graphs
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ANALYSIS: Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible

Fri, 2021-03-19 20:40 — mike kraft

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2

As COVID-19 vaccination rates pick up around the world, people have reasonably begun to ask: how much longer will this pandemic last? It’s an issue surrounded with uncertainties. But the once-popular idea that enough people will eventually gain immunity to SARS-CoV-2 to block most transmission — a ‘herd-immunity threshold’ — is starting to look unlikely.

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ANALYSIS: Post-immunization casesare very rare and but also very expected.

Fri, 2021-03-19 20:24 — mike kraft

Don’t Be Surprised When Vaccinated People Get Infected Post-immunization cases, sometimes called “breakthroughs,” are very rare and very expected. Katherine J. Wu The Atlantic

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Regular booster vaccines are the future to counter COVID-19 virus -- expert says

Mon, 2021-03-15 10:34 — mike kraft

Exclusive: Regular booster vaccines are the future in battle with COVID-19 virus, top genome expert says Regular booster vaccines against the novel coronavirus will be needed because of mutations that make it more transmissible and better able to evade human immunity, the head of Britain's effort to sequence the virus's genomes told Reuters. Guy Faulconbridge U.S.

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UK COVID-19 variant has significantly higher death rate--new study

Wed, 2021-03-10 08:38 — mike kraft

UK COVID-19 variant has significantly higher death rate, study finds A highly infectious variant of COVID-19 that has spread around the world since it was first discovered in Britain late last year is between 30% and 100% more deadly than previous dominant variants, researchers said on Wednesday. Kate Kelland U.S.

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Scientists still trying to track and evaluate the numerous coronavirus varians found in the US

Mon, 2021-03-08 18:18 — mike kraft

Multitude of coronavirus variants found in the US — but the threat is unclear Ramped-up sequencing efforts are helping to identify mutations that might boost transmission or help a virus evade immune responses. Ewen Callaway nature

For the scientists who have spent the past year poring over hundreds of thousands of coronavirus genomes, the United States has been an enigma. Despite having world-leading genome sequencing infrastructure and experiencing more COVID infections than any other country, the United States has until recently lagged far behind in sequencing coronavirus genomes and spotting worrisome variants.

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