England is about to re-impose nationwide restrictions on gatherings to control the spread of COVID-19. This comes less than two weeks after the end of the government’s half-a-billion-pound scheme to get people to eat out in restaurants. Depending on how things go, we may look back on this scheme asContinue Reading
India has overtaken Brazil and become the second-worst affected country in the world by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 4 million cases. COVID-19 had mostly remained in India’s cities, but the disease is now spreading to rural India – an area with over 850 million people and far worseContinue Reading
eamesBot/Shutterstock It is a conundrum. For much of the past two months, many people have been convinced that mortality associated with COVID-19 would rise as the number of people testing positive with the disease increased. But this has not happened so far. Why? A look at government data from EnglandContinue Reading
Sam Wordley/Shutterstock Public health responses to the pandemic have focused on dealing with the coronavirus, but attention is now turning to the growing list of negative effects of COVID-19 containment measures. One such problem is the low level of fitness among children and teenagers. One measure of fitness is cardioContinue Reading
The reopening of schools will be greeted with relief by many exhausted parents who have had to juggle working from home with childcare and homeschooling since the coronavirus pandemic began. But it will not be a return to normal for some families – the experience from Scotland, where schools wentContinue Reading
Scientists in Hong Kong have reported the first confirmed case of reinfection with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, reportedly backed up by genetic sequences of the two episodes of the 33-year-old man’s infections in March and in August 2020. Naturally people are worried what this could mean for our chancesContinue Reading
Jenov Jenovallen/Shutterstock By now, we are all familiar with guidance on how to reduce your risk of contracting coronavirus: wash your hands, wear a mask, social distance. But here’s another important piece of advice: don’t vape. Smoking has been shown to be a risk factor for more severe forms ofContinue Reading
Marish/Shutterstock The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact across the entire population, but one group likely to have been disproportionately affected is people with eating disorders. There are an estimated 1.3 million people in the UK living with an eating disorder. Our research has been exploring exactly how theContinue Reading
Children are at high risk of domestic violence and abuse, but are often left out of research and strategies to address it. Joaquin Corbalan P/Shutterstock Government instruction to stay home during coronavirus lockdown was life-threatening for those caught up in violent or abusive relationships. Sixteen women and girls were killedContinue Reading
Alena Ozerova/Shutterstock SARS-CoV-2 almost certainly originated in an animal. But ever since the virus infected humans the outbreak has been driven by efficient human-to-human transmission, resulting in the current pandemic. The role of animals in the ongoing spread of the virus is negligible. But does this mean we can ignoreContinue Reading
