New Scientist Australian Edition 7-Mar-20

WE ARE facing a global emergency, and politicians who appear to not believe in science are putting us all at risk. That this statement applies equally to coronavirus (see our special report, starting overleaf) and climate change says something about the era in which we live. Our response to the ever-widening outbreak has surprising parallels with our efforts to tackle global warming, though at accelerated speed. There are some transferable lessons. First, we must listen to scientists. There have been reports of public health officials in the US being told not to speak to the media without first clearing it with the White House. This is a mistake. As with climate change, open discussion of the risks and uncertainties is the only way forward. Likewise, science alone can’t guide our…

WITH cases detected in more than 70 countries, and significant outbreaks not only in China but also in South Korea, Italy and Iran, the novel coronavirus first detected in Wuhan, China, has truly gone global. This week, it emerged that the covid-19 virus could already be circulating in the US. Similar genetic sequences were detected in viruses from two people who contracted the disease weeks apart. One comes from a case in Snohomish County, Washington, in which the infected person had no contact with another known case or outbreak location. Despite this, the virus sequence closely matches that in the first infection detected in the US, on 21 January, in a man in the same county who had visited Wuhan. Both sequences share a rare single mutation. “This strongly suggests…

LAST week, the World Health Organization raised its assessment of the global risk from the novel coronavirus to Very High – its maximum level. The virus has escaped containment in at least four countries. But the WHO is eager for nations to keep practising containment measures (see “Why the WHO won’t use the p-word”, right). These can slow the spread of the virus in countries that only have a few cases. But as long as it is circulating somewhere in the world, new cases will continue to crop up in countries even if they have effective containment practices. Mike Ryan of the WHO said on 28 February that the goal isn’t to stop the virus spreading, but “to slow its spread so health systems can prepare”. But what will that…

PREPARE for a pandemic, said the World Health Organization, as the global spread of covid-19 began to soar. Yet so far the WHO isn’t calling covid-19 a pandemic. Why? The answer may lie with what kicks into gear when we deploy the p-word. Countries have pandemic plans that are launched when one is declared, but these plans may not be appropriate for covid-19. There are no global criteria for a pandemic. There used to be for flu, but the WHO abandoned them when it was criticised after declaring a flu pandemic in 2009 that triggered expensive countermeasures in some countries. That could be one reason the WHO seems anxious to avoid the word pandemic for now. But there is a more important one. There are two responses to a growing…

AS CONCERN increases worldwide, unscientific information about covid-19 and how to protect yourself is now rife, proliferating on social media and through messaging apps. Here’s what we really know about it. What are the symptoms? More than 80 per cent of cases appear to be mild-to-moderate. The most common symptoms include fever, dry cough and tiredness, but some people may get just a sore throat or runny nose. Other individuals may not notice symptoms at all, but some go on to develop difficulty breathing and may ultimately experience organ failure. Who is most at risk? A report covering 82 deaths linked to covid-19 in Wuhan, China, found that 80 per cent of those who had died were over the age of 60, and three-quarters of these had other disorders that…

THE world dodged a bullet in 2003 when a global effort contained the SARS coronavirus, after it jumped from bats to humans in China and then spread to 26 countries. We nearly had another close call when MERS, another bat coronavirus, spilled over into people in 2012. A year later, Chinese scientists found SARS-like viruses in fruit bats that could infect human cells. And in 2016, the World Health Organization put coronaviruses among the top eight known viral threats requiring more research. So you would think we would have some coronavirus drugs and vaccines by now. But there are none licensed. That is why we are hurriedly testing drugs designed for other viruses to see if they can help, and running expedited trials for experimental vaccines. Why were we so…