COVID-19 (Page 64)

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s summer statement on July 8 was intended to show how the government can quickly end its emergency bankrolling of the economy, and let a re-energised private sector take the strain again. Since the lockdown was imposed in March, a furlough scheme has allowed shuttered firms to retain up to 9 million idled employees – over one-third of the workforce – at an Exchequer cost so far of £60 billion. When the furlough scheme ends in October, Sunak has announced that it will be replaced by a £1,000 bonus for each employee retained until January 2021, at a maximum cost of £9 billion. There is also the addition of a £2 billion work-placement scheme, to open up jobsContinue Reading

Fruit bats. nutsiam/Shutterstock Bats harbour many diverse viruses, including coronaviruses. Indeed, Sars, Mers and COVID-19 – which are all caused by coronaviruses – are thought to have emerged from bats. These diseases can be deadly to humans, yet bats seem to be unaffected by them. Like all animal species, bats possess their own range of pathogens – viral, bacterial and fungal. Organisms are part of an interconnected system of other living things that evolved to exploit and be exploited in turn. Bats have therefore evolved with a set of viruses that infect them and continuously circulate through the bat population. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 is a member of a family of viruses called the coronaviridae (coronaviruses). Coronaviruses, orContinue Reading

r.classen/Shutterstock Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re still learning what the disease can do. There are now detailed reports of brain illness emerging in people with relatively mild lung illness, in those who are critically ill and also in those in recovery. One key thing we’re seeing is that severity of lung illness doesn’t always correlate with severity of neurological illness. Having only minor lung illness doesn’t protect against potentially severe complications. When it comes to the brain and nerves, the virus appears to have four main sets of effects: A confused state (known as delirium or encephalopathy), sometimes with psychosis and memory disturbance. Inflammation of the brain (known as encephalitis). This includes a form showing inflammatory lesions –Continue Reading

Don't fret. 3DDock There is no limit to the quantity of money that can be created by a central bank such as the Bank of England. It was different in the days of the gold standard, when central banks were restrained by a promise to redeem their money for gold on demand. But countries moved away from this system in the early part of the 20th century, and central banks nowadays can issue as much money as they like. This observation is the root of modern monetary theory (MMT), which has attracted new attention during the pandemic, as governments around the world increase spending and public debts become all the more burdensome. MMT proponents argue that governments can spend asContinue Reading

The news that the US has bought the global supply of remdesivir – a drug that can treat COVID-19 – has rightly been criticised as “treatment nationalism”. But the US is not the only country acting selfishly. The UK recently banned the export of dexamethasone – the only drug proven to reduce deaths in people severely ill with COVID. Treatment nationalism is not a new phenomenon. During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, wealthy countries dominated the procurement of the swine flu vaccine. Developing countries only got access to the vaccine much later on in the pandemic (when the vaccine would have been less effective) and in much smaller doses. This is poor public health and it is poor multilateralism. ItContinue Reading

Leicester, England. trabantos/Shutterstock The city of Leicester, in the UK’s Midlands region, is facing a lockdown following a recent spike in COVID cases. The decision was confirmed by UK home secretary, Priti Patel, on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, June 27. The prospect of these local lockdowns being introduced in the UK was announced by the health secretary, Matt Hancock, at a daily briefing on June 7. National lockdowns create significant economic and social harms, so moving beyond them is a priority for governments everywhere – and local lockdowns have been proffered as the solution. Local lockdowns are not new. Indeed, the first lockdown of the pandemic was in the city of Wuhan in China. More recently, Germany,Continue Reading

In the middle of the coronavirus crisis, many of us have turned to nature to reduce stress levels, improve mental health and stay physically active. Yet, human interaction with nature and ecosystems contributed to the existence of the current pandemic in the first place. So what can we take away from this? Human action has altered our planet, from land to ocean, and has led to a loss of ecosystems. There is strong evidence that the emergence of zoonotic diseases – those that jump between animals – is linked to alteration of ecosystems and human encroachment into wildlife habitats, and the United Nations has recently linked environmental degradation to the emergence of pandemics. There are two main ways that ourContinue Reading

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have been working around the clock to find an effective treatment. The first drug to show promise is dexamethasone, a cheap, widely available steroid. A large clinical trial run by the University of Oxford showed that the drug cut the risk of death for COVID-19 patients on ventilators by a third, and by a fifth for those on oxygen. Peter Horby, the chief investigator on the trial, described the results as a “major breakthrough”. However, dexamethasone is not a panacea. Its beneficial effects are confined to critically ill COVID-19 patients in need of respiratory support. It has less impact on those with milder forms of the disease. What is encouraging about dexamethasoneContinue Reading

Denijal photography/Shutterstock Confirmed COVID-19 cases have now passed 10 million: what will they be next week, globally and in your country? Having a good estimate can help health authorities with their responses and will guide governments as they ease lockdowns. To this end, we have been publishing real-time forecasts for confirmed cases and deaths for many parts of the world on an almost daily basis since March 20. These have largely been reliable indicators of what can be expected to happen in the next week. Many of the more formal models for predicting the pandemic – such as the well-publicised Imperial College London model that guided the UK government’s response – use maths to try to explain the underlying processesContinue Reading

Punchdrunk's production of The Masque of the Red Death. Photography by Stephen Dobbie, Author provided Pubs and cinemas may be opening in the UK, but the performing arts sector remains languishing under lockdown and live performance continues to be prohibited. The government’s roadmap, published at the end of June, has failed to excite, offering nothing in the way of certainty or, more importantly, money. But, at the same time, some news has given the sector a vision of one alternative future. Punchdrunk, the pioneering immersive theatre company, is to form a partnership with Niantic – the technology innovators behind the global success of Pokemon Go. This collaboration has the potential to deliver intimate immersive experiences on a hitherto unrealised orContinue Reading