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Tracing the Origin of the Covid Virus

Tracing the Origin of the Covid Virus | healthcare technology | Scoop.it

With cases soaring across the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic is nowhere near its end, but with three vaccines reporting trial data and two apparently nearing approval by the US FDA, it may be reaching a pivot point.

 

In what feels like a moment of drawing breath and taking stock, international researchers are turning their attention from the present back to the start of the pandemic, aiming to untangle its origin and asking what lessons can be learned to keep this from happening again.

 

Two efforts are happening in parallel. On November 5, the World Health Organization quietly published the rules of engagement for a long-planned and months-delayed mission that creates a multinational team of researchers who will pursue how the virus leaped species. Meanwhile, last week, a commission created by The Lancet and headed by the economist and policy expert Jeffrey Sachs announced the formation of its own international effort, a task force of 12 experts from nine countries who will undertake similar tasks.

 

Both groups will face the same complex problems. It has been approximately a year since the first cases of a pneumonia of unknown origin appeared in Wuhan, China, and about 11 months since the pneumonia’s cause was identified as a novel coronavirus, probably originating in bats.

 

The experts will have to retrace a chain of transmission—one or multiple leaps of the virus from the animal world into humans—using interviews, stored biological samples, lab assays, environmental surveys, genomic data, and the thousands of papers published since the pandemic began, all while following a trail that may have gone cold.

 

The point is not to look for patient zero, the first person infected—or even a hypothetical bat zero, the single animal from which the novel virus jumped.

 

It’s likely neither of those will ever be found. The goal instead is to elucidate the ecosystem—physical, but also viral—in which the spillover happened and ask what could make it likely to happen again.

 

more at WIRED : https://www.wired.com/story/two-global-efforts-try-to-trace-the-origin-of-the-covid-virus/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-intl-en

nrip's insight:

Back tracing the origins of an outbreak or an epidemic is way tougher than people expect it to be. So much changes during the period the epidemic ravages on, including the data from the time at which it was breaking out. Its high time, the world and health experts learn that the best way to manage and trace the roots of an outbreak is to prevent it, and if a break out happens, act fast towards containing its spread and studying it in parallel.

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Nanoparticle Pills Usher Medicine Into the Future

Nanoparticle Pills Usher Medicine Into the Future | healthcare technology | Scoop.it

Although nanomedicine is a promising area of research, scientists have been unable to figure out a way to deliver drugs using nanoparticles other than by injection, which is both distasteful and inconvenient for patients. Now, a team of researchers from MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed a new nanoparticle that can be absorbed through the digestive tract, allowing patients to take a pill instead of receiving injections.


"If you were a patient and you had a choice, there's just no question," Professor Robert Langer, of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, stated in a press release. “Patients would always prefer drugs they can take orally.” 


Ultrafine particles, or nanoparticles, are between one and 100 nanometers in size. What makes nanoparticles so interesting to scientists, particularly in the field of medicine, is the fact that the physics underlying nanoparticles means that their properties are different from the properties of the bulk material. Additionally, size and surface characteristics of nanoparticles can be manipulated. Yet, nanoparticles have not yet been available as a pill because, despite their tiny size, they are unable to penetrate the intestinal lining. This is no simple feat as the lining is made of a layer of epithelial cells that join together forming impenetrable barriers known as tight junctions.

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