A still from a Twitter video in which Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces he has tested positive for coronavirus. (TWITTER/@BorisJohnson/
UK prime minister has COVID-19
- UK prime minister Boris Johnson has tested positive for coronavirus, as has the health secretary, Matt Hancock. Both politicians say their symptoms are mild and they will continue working — remotely — on the country’s response to the rising number of infections and deaths. Prince Charles tested positive for the virus earlier this week. (BBC | 27 min read)
- The British government says that, within days, it will begin large-scale serological testing that will show whether a person has been previously infected with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The ‘finger-prick’ tests will be available to buy from Amazon and pharmacies, and can be performed at home. If the roll-out goes ahead as planned, the country could become the first to implement at-home testing on this scale. Many questions remain unanswered: how accurate the tests will be, who will make them and how they can be manufactured in sufficient amounts. (Nature | Continuously updated)
- A radical proposal to infect healthy people with the coronavirus to test vaccines could dramatically speed up research. A ‘human challenge’ study would involve exposing perhaps 100 healthy young people to the virus and seeing whether those who get the vaccine escape infection. Bioethicist Nir Eyal, who co-authored a provocative preprint proposing such a study, tells Nature how the study could be done safely and ethically. Participants, he argues, might even be better off for it. (Nature | 6 min read)
- The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yesterday that it will temporarily suspend its enforcement of environmental laws because of the outbreak. “During this extraordinary time, EPA believes that it is more important for facilities to ensure that their pollution control equipment remains up and running and the facilities are operating safely, than to carry out routine sampling and reporting,” said an EPA spokesperson. (The Hill | 6 min read)
- As we approach the three-month mark since the COVID-19 outbreak began, it’s worth taking a breath to catch up on what we know and the many questions that still need to be answered. From tests to immunity, STAT does a quick round-up of the state of play. (STAT | 11 min read)
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