President Joe Biden on May 12 commemorated the death of 1 million people in the United States from COVID-19, marking what he called “a tragic milestone” and urging Americans to “remain vigilant” amid the ongoing pandemic.
The continued spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spawned a Greek alphabet of variants – a naming system used by the World Health Organization to track concerning new mutations of the virus that causes Covid-19. Some have equipped the virus with better ways of infecting humans or evading vaccine protection.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on May 12 for the need to double the capacity of Covid-19 vaccine production and for fairer redistribution of the shots in the developing world, which faces new waves of the coronavirus.
New mutations, or variants, of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 are continuing to be discovered. Health officials in Florida cited a new mutation of the Brazilian strain (P.1) that they are calling P2 or P.1.1.
As a massive Covid-19 surge continues to rage on throughout India, scientists and public health officials scramble to determine whether currently authorized vaccines in the country can provide a mitigation effect to this unprecedented spread. A new study published online has provided some hope, with researchers suggesting that the Covaxin vaccine – developed by Bharat Biotech and Pennsylvania-based Ocugen – could neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 variant leading the second wave in India.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stepping up efforts to track coronavirus mutations and keep vaccines and treatments effective against new variants until collective immunity is reached, the agency’s chief said.
The Covid-19-causing coronavirus is mutating while spreading around the world in the pandemic, but none of the mutations currently documented appears to be making the SARS-CoV-2 virus able to spread more rapidly, scientists said.
A roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.
