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Labradors are still America's favorite dog, but corgis have wiggled into the top 10
Boris Johnson and his partner named their new son after doctors who saved Johnson's life during his battle with Covid-19
Taco Bell is offering a taco bar kit so you can celebrate Cinco de Mayo at home in style
"Because I can't really pinpoint or go back in the past, I just think it's very important to talk to people, to express how important it is to just keep your social distancing. Stay in the house!"
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InFebruary 1976 at Fort Dix, N.J., a military recruit died within 24 hours of a new kind of swine flu.
When 500more people acquired it and four got sick, a public panic ensued (fueled by fears of another pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed over 50 million worldwide) and a rush to a vaccine began. The federal government agreed to accept liability for adverse events.
By October the vaccine was ready, and by November, more than 6 million doses had been given. In December, serious side effects emerged, and by January, more than 500 cases of Guillain-Barre Syndrome had been reported (linked to the vaccine) with 25deaths, and the pandemic never came. What happened instead was millions of dollars of lawsuits.
BERNIE MARCUS: CORONAVIRUS DEVASTATION HOLD CHINA ACCOUNTABLE, THIS STATE'S ACTION A GOOD START
Ever since then, the federal government has been reluctant to take complete responsibility for emergency vaccine production.But the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act signed into law by President Bush in 2005, protects vaccine manufacturers from financial risk during a declared public health emergency. It was utilized during the rush for an H1N1 swine flu vaccine during the pandemic of 2009. And now, when the ferocious and wildly contagious new coronavirus has convinced the Trump administration to step up and throw caution to the wind.
This is an inspiring development and a proactive use of government authority (a joint program chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Department of Defense Secretary Mark Esper) thatshould be lauded no matter which side of the political aisle you are on.
Operation Warp Speed is an unprecedented,no-holds-barred program to speed discovery, productionand large-scale manufacturing of a vaccine against COVID 19. It is not just ambitious and unprecedented science, it is also courageous, government at its best.
Billions of dollars in health care costs and many thousands if not millions of lives stand to be saved if this project succeeds, with the government financially backing massive production and assuming all liability. This vaccine project is so ambitious that it is being compared to the Manhattan Project from WWII, where we won the race against the Germans to develop the atomicbomb.
I spoke withAzar about Operation Warp Speed on SiriusXm Doctor Radio this week. He was more excited than Ive ever seen him. He talked about changing the paradigm, assuming the riskand matching manufacturing with the emerging science so that by the time a vaccine candidate makes it through trials, production will have already ramped up to match it. The goal, as the president announcedon Sunday night, will be to produce a viable vaccine by the end of the year.
As opposed to the 1976 swine flu fiasco, in 2020 we have a real pandemic that has already killed more than60,000 Americans and is, unfortunately, not going to stop there.
We have to put the full weight of all of government, all of industry, behind this, Azar said to me. Vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. Money is not the question here. The question is the ability and willingness to challenge the traditional development of timelines and paradigms. You know, thenormal way that vaccine or drug development works is you develop it, you do a little trial, then you do a second trial, then you do a third trial, then if it hits you decide OK, now Ill start doing commercial scale of manufacturing, and then thats just months and months and years ...
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"We, the U.S. government, can actually take on that risk. So we have assembled a portfolio of potential vaccines. We have assessed each of them based on the manufacturer, the platform, the manufacturing scalability, the precedent nature of the molecule and vector so that we know if this is something that likely is going to work. And we invest in that.
"What we are also going to do is invest in manufacturing at the same time. So that we can scale up. And that means we may end up with vaccine manufacturing capacity that we dont need. And so be it. Because we are going to put those bets against molecules very early on. So that if we get a hit we are going to be able to scale production immediately also.
Some of the vaccine candidates utilize new techniques of biogenetic engineering while others rely on an older more tried-and-true inactivated viral vector. In all cases the technology is promising and safety in small trials has already been shown for several of the candidates.
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As opposed to the 1976 swine flu fiasco, in 2020 we have a real pandemic that has already killed more than60,000 Americans and is, unfortunately, not going to stop there. As with the Manhattan Project, my bet is, once again, the U.S. government willdefy all the odds and win.
This is what government is intended for; to make the bet and assume the risk and, if they win, to save many of our lives.
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) Philadelphia researchers are working on a COVID-19 vaccine thats currently being tested on 20 people at the University of Pennsylvania. Its using a new, unproven genetic technology that could be faster than traditional vaccine development.
This is one of about a dozen vaccines in the very early stages of testing. The reason there is so much interest and excitement about the one being tested here in Philadelphia, is its ability to potentially be fast-tracked.
Coronavirus Latest: What You Need To Know And Staying Connected
For the volunteers in this first phase of testing, there appears to be little risk.
Helping to respond to this pandemic, this is like a wonderful opportunity, said Anthony Campisi.
Campisi is one of 20 volunteers testing a COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Pennsylvania.
I think its incumbent upon everyone to do whatever they can in a moment like this, Campisi said.
Traditional vaccines made with a live virus takes years. However, this one from Inovio Pharmaceuticals in Plymouth Meeting uses a DNA replica of the coronavirus genome released by China.
Development could be much faster, according to Dr. Joseph Kim, the head of Inovio.
Our plan is to manufacture 100,000 doses by the end of the year, Kim said.
This is phase one of the clinical trial, where the vaccines safety is tested. Campisi, whos with Ceisler Media in Philadelphia, received his first injection on April 20.
Absolutely no symptoms whatsoever, Campisi said.
Blood tests will show if hes developing antibodies to the vaccine the first step to determine if it can train the immune system to recognize and attack COVID-19.
I think a vaccine is the solution everybody is looking for. I dont know if this vaccine is gonna be the solution, said Dr. Pablo Tebas, who is leading the Penn trial. I think its important that we develop different kinds of vaccines.
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Tebas says if this vaccine pans out, it should be available by the beginning of next year. Campisi is hoping.
It would be very gratifying to play even a really small role in, you know, coming up with a response to pass this pandemic, Campisi said.
Campisi, whos 33, is a Penn general practice patient. He saw information about the trial in a regular correspondence with his doctor there and quickly signed up.
The vaccine is also being tested by 20 people in Kansas City.
Tom Costello and Tim Stelloh
45m ago / 9:56 PM UTC
Researchers at Pfizer and New York University are working on a never-before-triedcoronavirusvaccine that the pharmaceutical company believes could be available by September.
The vaccine, which carries genetic code known as messenger RNA, attempts to reprogram the deadly pathogen rather than manipulating the live virus.
It is probably the fastest way of having a vaccine available to stem this pandemic, based on the data that I have seen, said Kathrin Jansen, who leads vaccine research for Pfizer.
Read the full story here.
Allan Smith
1h ago / 9:20 PM UTC
President Donald Trumpthinksall the states that need Congress to provideemergency relief fundingare "run by Democrats in every case" and he charged it's because they have been fiscally mismanaged.
That's not the case. Numerous Republican-led states are facingcoronavirus-caused financial crises, just like the Democrats.
Less than 24 hours after conducting an interview withThe New York Postin which Trump made those remarks, the president took off to visit a mask-making plant in Arizona a Republican-led state thatby its own projections could face a shortfallranging from $600 million to $1.6 billion by the end of the next fiscal year.
Arizona is not alone. COVID-19 has led to dramatic decreases in revenue for state governments across the country regardless of which party has its hand on the wheel. While many states are still crunching their numbers ahead of the next fiscal year, which begins in the summer for most, a handful of GOP-led states already have made clear the budget woes that face them.
Read the full story here.
Dylan Byers
2h ago / 9:11 PM UTC
The Walt Disney Company says the coronavirus pandemic cost the company as much as $1.4 billion in income during the first three months of the year, a disruption it says will only get worse in the months ahead. The most severe blow to the company came in its theme parks unit, which suffered an estimated $1 billion revenue hit.
Disney's per-share profit was down 63 percent, to 60 cents.
The losses reflect how vulnerable almost all of Disney's businesses are to social distancing measures. Its theme parks have been shuttered, cinemas have been closed and its content production has been put on hold. Its television unit, which relies heavily on ESPN's ability to broadcast live sports, has also been interrupted.
The pandemic has hit us hard, Disney chairman and former CEO Bob Iger said on an earnings call Tuesday afternoon. But he said he had "absolute confidence in our ability to get through this challenging period and recover successfully."
One bright spot was Disney+, the company's new streaming service, which has signed up more than 54 million subscribers since its launch in December.Disney also announced that it will reopen Shanghai Disneyland on May 11.
Doha Madani
2h ago / 8:59 PM UTC
Two men were charged in Rhode Island with fraudulently seeking more than a half-million dollars instimulus loans created as part of federal coronavirus protections.
David A. Staveley, 53, and David Butziger, 51, are the first in the nation to be charged with stimulus fraud involving the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program,according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for the District of Rhode Island. The two men allegedly conspired to obtain loans from the SBA using false information.
The investigation into the men was part of a directive to prioritize crimes related to the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. Attorney Aaron L. Weisman said in a press release Tuesday.
It is unconscionable that anyone would attempt to steal from a program intended to help hard working Americans continue to be paid so they can feed their families and pay some of their bills, Weisman said.
Read the full article here.
Ali Gostanian
57m ago / 9:44 PM UTC
Hundreds of hospital employees in New York participated in a candlelight vigil and walk to honor more than2,200Northwell Healthpatients and 19 staff members who have passed away from COVID-19.
The walk, the brainchild of hospital employees, was held Monday atNorthwell Healths New Hyde Park, Long Island campus.
Video of the vigil obtained by NBC News Social Newsgathering team shows hospital employees in masks holding candles in the air as songwriter Andra Days Rise Up plays in the background.
The walk spanned the entirety of the New Hyde Park campus, which is home to Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Cohen Childrens Medical Center and Zucker Hillside Hospital. After employees completed the walk, Michael Golberg, executive director of LIJ Medical Center, thanked employees for their hard work and dedication fighting on the front lines of the pandemic.
We have been very lucky in many ways that at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Cohens Childrens, Northwell Health that we have saved many many more people than have lost their lives to COVID-19, Goldberg stated. And that is a true testament to the care you provide.
The Associated Press
23m ago / 10:18 PM UTC
They wanted the campus experience, but their colleges sent them home to learn online during thecoronavirus pandemic. Now, students at more than 25 U.S. universities arefiling lawsuits against their schools demanding partial refunds on tuition and campus fees, saying theyre not getting the caliber of education they were promised.
The suits reflect students growing frustration with online classes that schools scrambled to create as the coronavirus forced campuses across the nation to close last month. The suits say students should pay lower rates for the portion of the term that was offered online, arguing that the quality of instruction is far below the classroom experience.
Colleges, though, reject the idea that refunds are in order. Students are learning from the same professors who teach on campus, officials have said, and theyre still earning credits toward their degrees. Schools insist that, after being forced to close by their states, theyre still offering students a quality education.
Grainger Rickenbaker, a freshman who filed a class-action lawsuit against Drexel University in Philadelphia, said the online classes hes been taking are poor substitutes for classroom learning. Theres little interaction with students or professors, he said, and some classes are being taught almost entirely through recorded videos, with no live lecture or discussion.
Read the full story here.
Lucy Bayly
3h ago / 8:06 PM UTC
Airbnb will lay off 25 percent of its workforce, or 1,900 employees, the home-sharing company confirmed on Tuesday.
We are collectively living through the most harrowing crisis of our lifetime,"CEO Brian Chesky told employees on a group call.
Chesky said revenue for 2020 is expected to be less than half of what it was in 2019, with no clear idea whentravel will return, nor what it will look like.
"Travel in this new world will look different, and we need to evolve Airbnb accordingly," Chesky said.
The travel industry as a whole has been pummeled by the viral outbreak, with airlines, hotels and resorts, and cruise lines ground to a halt.
Airbnb had been hoping to start the process this spring to go public, either bydirect listing or via IPO.
Maura Barrett and Matt Wargo
3h ago / 7:54 PM UTC
While a recent CDC report suggests Pennsylvania has the highest number of meat facilities affected by COVID-19, there are no state requirements for facilities to report cases or deaths publicly.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 2,032 positive cases for workers within the food industry at 120 facilities statewide Tuesday.These include processing and manufacturing facilities, retail facilities, warehouse and distribution facilities, restaurants and farms, according to the state.
But the specific facilities with COVID-19 cases have not been publicly identified.As a result,workers and members of the community are ignorant to the risk of potential exposure. There also isnt regulation that a plant needs to shut down if positive cases are discovered.The CDC referred an inquiry from NBC News to the state health department, which refused to release a full list of 22 affected plants with cases or clusters of cases, adding, There are no requirements that this information be reported to the public, but we would expect facilities to inform employees. The state also declined to provide a list of counties in which the plants are located.
Wendell Young of UFCW Local 1776 has been working with several plants that reported cases to members. The plants have followed a range of measures including shutting down for sanitization and reopening with new additions like Plexiglas dividers, temperature checks, and additional seating or spacing in areas like lunchrooms.
We have employers not doing the right thing right now that are concealing the cases, not informing workers, not implementing the right protocols, and nobody's prosecuting them. No one's holding them responsible for how they're putting people at risk, and possibly killing people. And that's our federal government's fault. That's our presidents fault, Young said.
Geoff Bennett and Dareh Gregorian
4h ago / 7:09 PM UTC
A top Health and Human Services official who says he wasshoved out of his key coronavirus response jobfor pushing back on "efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections" filed a whistleblower complaint Tuesday charging "an abuse of authority or gross mismanagement" at the agency.
In his complaint, Dr. Rick Bright, who until last month was deputy assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for preparedness and response and director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, described a chaotic response the virus at HHS.
The chaos was fueled largely by "pressure from HHS leadership to ignore scientific merit and expert recommendations and instead to award lucrative contracts based on political connections and cronyism," the complaint says.
Read the full story here.
Jane C. Timm
4h ago / 7:01 PM UTC
Sen. Rand Paul, the only senator known to have contracted COVID-19, defended his decision not to wear a mask on Capitol Hill Tuesday, citing his recovery from the disease.
I have immunity. Ive already had the virus, so I cant get it again and I cant give it to anybody, Paul, R-Ky., told reporters, referring to his March diagnosis. I cant get it again, nor can I transmit. So of all the people youll meet here, Im about the only safe person in Washington.
Paul's claims are unproven. Medical experts do not yet know what kind of immunity recovered patients have to COVID-19.
Broadly speaking, some infections result in lifelong immunity (think chicken pox) while other infections will produce short-term immunity in recovered patients. And while many experts do believe some kind of immunity will come with recovery, there are reports of recovered COVID patients who have tested positive again after testing negative.
Doha Madani
4h ago / 6:42 PM UTC
More than 700 employees at a Tyson Foods meat factory in Perry, Iowa, have tested positive for coronavirus as the nation braces for a possiblemeat shortagedue to the pandemic.
An Iowa Department of Public Health report released Tuesday showed that 58 percent of the factorys workforce had tested positive for the virus,according to NBC affiliate WHO. The news comes just days afternearly 900 workers were confirmed to have the virusat a Tyson Foods plant in Indiana.
Tyson Foods said in a statement that the pandemic hasforced the company to slow productionand close plants in Dakota City, Nebraska, and Pasco, Washington, and the Perry plant as well.
"We have and expect to continue to face slowdowns and temporary idling of production facilities from team member shortages or choices we make to ensure operational safety," the statement said.
Read the full story here.
Among the most important unanswered questions about Covid-19 is this: What role do children play in keeping the pandemic going?
Fewer children seem to get infected by the coronavirus than adults, and most of those who do have mild symptoms, if any. But do they pass the virus on to adults and continue the chain of transmission?
The answer is key to deciding whether and when to reopen schools, a step that President Trump urged states to consider before the summer.
Two new studies offer compelling evidence that children can transmit the virus. Neither proved it, but the evidence was strong enough to suggest that schools should be kept closed for now, many epidemiologists who were not involved in the research said.
Many other countries, including Israel, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have all either reopened schools or are considering doing so in the next few weeks.
In some of those countries, the rate of community transmission is low enough to take the risk. But in others, including the United States, reopening schools may nudge the epidemics reproduction number the number of new infections estimated to stem from a single case, commonly referred to as R0 to dangerous levels, epidemiologists warned after reviewing the results from the new studies.
In one study, published last week in the journal Science, a team analyzed data from two cities in China Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, and Shanghai and found that children were about a third as susceptible to coronavirus infection as adults were. But when schools were open, they found, children had about three times as many contacts as adults, and three times as many opportunities to become infected, essentially evening out their risk.
Based on their data, the researchers estimated that closing schools is not enough on its own to stop an outbreak, but it can reduce the surge by about 40 to 60 percent and slow the epidemics course.
My simulation shows that yes, if you reopen the schools, youll see a big increase in the reproduction number, which is exactly what you dont want, said Marco Ajelli, a mathematical epidemiologist who did the work while at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento, Italy.
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The second study, by a group of German researchers, was more straightforward. The team tested children and adults and found that children who test positive harbor just as much virus as adults do sometimes more and so, presumably, are just as infectious.
Are any of these studies definitive? The answer is No, of course not, said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who was not involved in either study. But, he said, to open schools because of some uninvestigated notion that children arent really involved in this, that would be a very foolish thing.
The German study was led by Christian Drosten, a virologist who has ascended to something like celebrity status in recent months for his candid and clear commentary on the pandemic. Dr. Drosten leads a large virology lab in Berlin that has tested about 60,000 people for the coronavirus. Consistent with other studies, he and his colleagues found many more infected adults than children.
The team also analyzed a group of 47 infected children between ages 1 and 11. Fifteen of them had an underlying condition or were hospitalized, but the remaining were mostly free of symptoms. The children who were asymptomatic had viral loads that were just as high or higher than the symptomatic children or adults.
In this cloud of children, there are these few children that have a virus concentration that is sky-high, Dr. Drosten said.
He noted that there is a significant body of work suggesting that a persons viral load tracks closely with their infectiousness. So Im a bit reluctant to happily recommend to politicians that we can now reopen day cares and schools.
Dr. Drosten said he posted his study on his labs website ahead of its peer review because of the ongoing discussion about schools in Germany.
Many statisticians contacted him via Twitter suggesting one or another more sophisticated analysis. His team applied the suggestions, Dr. Drosten said, and even invited one of the statisticians to collaborate.
But the message of the paper is really unchanged by any type of more sophisticated statistical analysis, he said. For the United States to even consider reopening schools, he said, I think its way too early.
In the China study, the researchers created a contact matrix of 636 people in Wuhan and 557 people in Shanghai. They called each of these people and asked them to recall everyone theyd had contact with the day before the call.
They defined a contact as either an in-person conversation involving three or more words or physical touch such as a handshake, and asked for the age of each contact as well as the relationship to the survey participant.
Comparing the lockdown with a baseline survey from Shanghai in 2018, they found that the number of contacts during the lockdown decreased by about a factor of seven in Wuhan and eight in Shanghai.
There was a huge decrease in the number of contacts, Dr. Ajelli said. In both of those places, that explains why the epidemic came under control.
The researchers also had access to a rich data set from Hunan provinces Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials in the province traced 7,000 contacts of 137 confirmed cases, observed them over 14 days and tested them for coronavirus infection. They had information not just for people who became ill, but for those who became infected and remained asymptomatic, and for anyone who remained virus-free.
Data from hospitals or from households tend to focus only on people who are symptomatic or severely ill, Dr. Ajelli noted. This kind of data is better.
The researchers stratified the data from these contacts by age and found that children between the ages of 0 and 14 years are about a third less susceptible to coronavirus infection than those ages 15 to 64, and adults 65 or older are more susceptible by about 50 percent.
They also estimated that closing schools can lower the reproduction number again, the estimate of the number of infections tied to a single case by about 0.3; an epidemic starts to grow exponentially once this metric tops 1.
In many parts of the United States, the number is already hovering around 0.8, Dr. Ajelli said. If youre so close to the threshold, an addition of 0.3 can be devastating.
However, some other experts noted that keeping schools closed indefinitely is not just impractical, but may do lasting harm to children.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Universitys Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the decision to reopen schools cannot be made based solely on trying to prevent transmission.
I think we have to take a holistic view of the impact of school closures on kids and our families, Dr. Nuzzo said. I do worry at some point, the accumulated harms from the measures may exceed the harm to the kids from the virus.
E-learning approaches may temporarily provide children with a routine, but any parent will tell you its not really learning, she said. Children are known to backslide during the summer months, and adding several more months to that might permanently hurt them, and particularly those who are already struggling.
Im not saying we need to absolutely rip off the Band-aid and reopen schools tomorrow, she said, but we have to consider these other endpoints.
Dr. Nuzzo also pointed to a study in the Netherlands, conducted by the Dutch government, which concluded that patients under 20 years play a much smaller role in the spread than adults and the elderly.
But other experts said that study was not well designed because it looked at household transmission. Unless the scientists deliberately tested everyone, they would have noticed and tested only more severe infections which tend to be among adults, said Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Assumptions that children are not involved in the epidemiology, because they do not have severe illness, are exactly the kind of assumption that you really, really need to question in the face of a pandemic, Dr. Hanage said. Because if its wrong, it has really pretty disastrous consequences.
The experts all agreed on one thing: that governments should hold active discussions on what reopening schools looks like. Students could be scheduled to come to school on different days to reduce the number of people in the building at one time, for example; desks could be placed six feet apart; and schools could avoid having students gather in large groups.
Teachers with underlying health conditions or of advanced age should be allowed to opt out and given alternative jobs outside the classroom, if possible, Dr. Nuzzo said, and children with underlying conditions should continue to learn from home.
The leaders of the two new studies, Dr. Drosten and Dr. Ajelli, were both more circumspect, saying their role is merely to provide the data that governments can use to make policies.
Im somehow the bringer of the bad news but I cant change the news, Dr. Drosten said. Its in the data.
Researchers with the MOSAiC polar expedition inspect the ice in November. Life now feels surreal as they socialize normally, trying to imagine the global pandemic shutdown. Esther Horvath/Alfred Wegener Institute hide caption
Researchers with the MOSAiC polar expedition inspect the ice in November. Life now feels surreal as they socialize normally, trying to imagine the global pandemic shutdown.
How far would you go to escape the coronavirus pandemic?
The MOSAiC expedition is a big, international research project to study the warming Arctic. For a year, scientists from all over the world are taking turns living on a German icebreaker that's frozen into an ice floe while the ship drifts across the Arctic Ocean.
"So, looking around me from the ship's bridge, I can see the ice stretching away to the horizon in every direction," says Chris Marsay, a research associate at the University of Georgia.
He's studying trace elements that get deposited on the surface of the ocean from the atmosphere some good, like iron and zinc, which feed plankton and some bad, like lead. He also occasionally takes his turn on polar bear guard duty, though he says none have been spotted since he started his stint on the boat.
When Marsay left for his three-month shift, the coronavirus was only known to be in China. No one on the ship has gotten it.
"We're able to get on with our daily work," Marsay says. "We sit together for our meals, and we sit together to chat in the evenings."
Marsay and his colleagues were supposed to have left the ship last month, but because of the pandemic those flights were canceled.
"It's been kind of surreal to hear of the restrictions on daily life from family and friends back home," he says. "There have been plenty of conversations onboard about how strange it will be to get back and get confronted with a completely different way of life than that which we left in January."
Now the plan is to break out of the ice and meet another ship, so people can rotate on and off. The new arrivals will be quarantined and tested.
Some worry for friends and family back home. But in a way, Marsay says he and the others feel lucky to be onboard.
"I never expected to come to the middle of the Arctic Ocean and have my daily life less restricted than it would back home," he says. "But in many ways that's certainly the case at the moment."
Marsay says some onboard are eager to get back home. Others are just fine staying insulated from the virus, and all the measures to address it, as long as they can.
The coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China, over four months ago has since mutated and the new, dominant strain spreading across the U.S. appears to be even more contagious, according to a new study.
The new strain began spreading in Europe in early February before migrating to other parts of the world, including the United States and Canada, becoming the dominant form of the virus across the globe by the end of March, researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory wrote in a 33-page report published Thursday onBioRxiv.
If the coronavirus doesn't subside in the summer like the seasonal flu, it could mutate further and potentially limit the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccines being developed by scientists around the world, the researchers warned. Some vaccine researchers have been using the virus's genetic sequences isolated by health authorities early in the outbreak.
"This is hard news," Bette Korber, a computational biologist at Los Alamos and lead author of the study, the Los Angeles Times said she wrote on her Facebook page.
"But please don't only be disheartened by it," she continued. "Our team at LANL was able to document this mutation and its impact on transmission only because of a massive global effort of clinical people and experimental groups, who make new sequences of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) in their local communities available as quickly as they possibly can."
The study has yet to be peer-reviewed, but the researchers noted that news of the mutation was of "urgent concern" considering the more than 100 vaccines in the process of being developed to prevent Covid-19.
In early March, researchers in China said they found that two different types of the coronavirus could be causing infections worldwide.
In a study published on March 3, scientists at Peking University's School of Life Sciences and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai found that a more aggressive type of the new coronavirus had accounted for roughly 70% of analyzed strains, while 30% had been linked to a less aggressive type.The more aggressive and deadly strain was found to be prevalent in the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan the Chinese city where the virus first emerged.
The Los Alamos researchers, with the help of scientists at Duke University and the University of Sheffield in England, were able to analyze thousands of coronavirus sequences collected bythe Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza, an organization thatpromotes the rapid sharing of data from all influenza viruses and the coronavirus.
To date, the researchers have identified 14 mutations.
The mutation impacts the spike protein, a multifunctional mechanism that allows the virus to enter the host.
The research was supported by funding fromthe Medical Research Council, the National Institute of Health Research and Genome Research Limited.
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The UK now has the highest number of coronavirus deaths in Europe, according to the latest government figures.
There have been 29,427 deaths recorded across the UK - a figure Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said was "a massive tragedy".
The latest total for Italy, previously the highest in Europe, now stands at 29,315.
But experts say it could be months before full global comparisons can be made.
Both Italy and the UK record the deaths of people who have tested positive for coronavirus.
BBC head of statistics Robert Cuffe said Britain reached this figure faster in its epidemic than Italy.
But he said there are caveats in making such a comparison, including the UK population being about 10% larger than Italy's.
Each country also has different testing regimes, with Italy conducting more tests than the UK to date.
Speaking at the daily coronavirus briefing, Mr Raab said the 29,427 lives lost was "a massive tragedy" the country has "never seen before... on this scale, in this way".
But he would not be drawn on international comparisons, saying: "I don't think we will get a real verdict on how well countries have done until the pandemic is over, and particularly until we get comprehensive international data on all-cause mortality."
Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, of the University of Cambridge, said we can be "certain" that all reported figures are "substantial underestimates" of the true number who have died with the virus.
He said: "We can safely say that none of these countries are doing well, but this is not Eurovision and it is pointless to try and rank them."
He added the "only sensible comparison is by looking at excess all-cause mortality, adjusted for the age distribution of the country" [but] "even then it will be very difficult to ascribe the reasons for any differences."
This is a sobering moment. Italy was the first part of Europe to see cases rise rapidly, and the scenes of hospitals being overwhelmed were met with shock and disbelief.
But we should be careful how we interpret the figures.
On the face of it, both countries now count deaths in a similar way, including both in hospitals and the community.
But there are other factors to consider.
First, the UK has a slightly larger population. If you count cases per head of population, Italy still comes out worse - although only just.
Cases are confirmed by tests - and the amount of testing carried out varies.
The geographical spread looks quite different too - half of the deaths in Italy have happened in Lombardy.
In the UK, by comparison, they have been much more spread out. Less than a fifth have happened in London, which has a similar population to Lombardy.
Then, how do you factor in the indirect impact from things such as people not getting care for other conditions?
The fairest way to judge the impact in terms of fatalities is to look at excess mortality - the numbers dying above what would normally happen.
You need to do this over time. It will be months, perhaps even years, before we can really say who has the highest death toll.
Meanwhile, the personal stories of those who have died are still emerging. They include three members of the same family who died within weeks of each other after contracting the virus.
Keith Dunnington, 54, a nurse for more than 30 years, died at his parents home in South Shields on 19 April. His mother Lillian, 81, died on 1 May and her husband Maurice, 85, died days later.
Meanwhile, Momudou Dibba, a house-keeper at Watford Hospital who went "above and beyond" in his job, died with the virus on 29 April.
In a statement, West Hertfordshire NHS Trust said Mr Dibba, known as Mo, was "kind, caring and considerate".
Meanwhile, 14 people from the same care home in Northern Ireland have died from Covid-19 related symptoms.
There have now been 1,383,842 tests for coronavirus across the UK, including 84,806 tests yesterday, Mr Raab told the No 10 briefing.
For the third day in a row, the government has failed to hit its target of 100,000 daily tests.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock set the target at the beginning of April and the government announced on Friday and Saturday that it had hit the 100,000-plus mark.
Separately, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published data on Tuesday showing that by 24 April there were 27,300 deaths where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate.
Including deaths reported to the ONS since 24 April, it brings the total number to more than 32,000.
These figures can also include cases where a doctor suspects the individual was infected, but a test was not carried out - whereas the daily government figures rely on confirmed cases.
In other developments:
At a showpiece summit in September, the two are set to take a significant step forward in their economic and strategic relationship. At least that was the plan.
As things stand, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due to gather EU leaders and China's President Xi Jinping in the German city of Leipzig on September 14.
German diplomats say the location was selected because of the former East Germany's historical relationship with China. They say that Merkel, chairing the EU Council presidency for the final time in her chancellorship, was personally invested in the summit's success.
Indeed, pulling China closer to European values on human rights, climate change and multilateralism is the sort of thing leaders' legacies are made of. And while the Leipzig summit is far from a make or break moment in Europe's relationship with China, this level of fanfare has a lot to live up to.
However, there is a real sense in Brussels that the pandemic has led to a reset in European thinking on China.
"I think the coronavirus has been a necessary reminder to a lot of EU states that however attractive Chinese money looks, it is also a systemic rival," says Steven Blockmans, head of EU foreign policy at the Centre for European Policy Studies.
Blockmans is referring to a communique released by the EU Commission in March 2019, in which it described China as "a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance".
In the context of coronavirus, that Chinese model of government is concerning EU officials.
A spokesperson from the EU's Foreign Affairs and Security Policy told CNN the document cited by Politico was not in fact a draft report.
Whatever the truth, it's clear that some in Brussels are very concerned about China's behavior.
"It's all about seeing which (political) system is better at handling the virus. Is it a system that allows personal liberties? Or is it single-party autocracy where you can impose measures without worrying too much," said one EU official working across external affairs.
So, where does this all leave what was supposed to be the year where China and Europe finally got on the same page?
At the time of writing, very few believe that the Leipzig summit will be as Merkel and co first imagined.
On a practical level, the virus has meant that the two sides have not been able to physically meet. European diplomats point out that in the EU Council building, there are normally around 30 meeting rooms for representatives from the 27 member states to meet in and discuss sensitive issues. "Now there are only about 10 that can guarantee social distancing," said one diplomat.
Velina Tchakarova, head of institute at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, predicts that "China's actions during and after the covid-19 would result in further disagreements and fragmentation within the European countries [on] how to settle the relations with Beijing."
She points to disagreements on issues like allowing Chinese firms to build 5G networks and EU-level decisions on who can and cannot invest in member states.
For these reasons and more, most believe that the Leipzig summit will be totally overshadowed by coronavirus.
However, despite these low levels of trust and overt acknowledgment that China is a "systemic rival," it seems likely the EU will try and get things back on track.
"It will make us rethink, but at the same time we cannot walk away from China," an EU diplomat told CNN. "All of our economies rely on supply chains that run back to Wuhan and beyond. We've always said no one's interests are going to be served from not trading with them. So that problem will always be there."
Another German diplomat defended pressing on, saying that "China's influence is rising, but it's not one-sided. Obviously, China also needs Europe." This, Brussels officials hope, means it can pressure China on things like its position on human rights.
For the EU, engagement with China is about more than money. "Increasing its engagement with China gives the EU a chance to double down on its strategic priorities," says Blockmans, referring to the key EU foreign policy priority of balancing its relations with China and the US, giving the EU more autonomy on the world stage.
However, concerns over China's transparency during the pandemic has been a sharp reminder as to exactly what engagement with China actually means.
On one hand, the EU's calculation on China hasn't changed: it's still desirable to not get squashed between the two great superpowers, China and America. On the other, recent history shows China to be an unreliable partner who divides opinion among EU member states.
Sooner or later, Europe will have to weigh these two realities up and decide exactly how much that diplomatic independence from America is really worth.
These malicious actors "frequently target organizations in order to collect bulk personal information, intellectual property and intelligence that aligns with national priorities," according to the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
"The pandemic has likely raised additional requirements for APT actors to gather information related to COVID-19. For example, actors may seek to obtain intelligence on national and international healthcare policy or acquire sensitive data on COVID-19 related research," the advisory says.
APTs are generally hacking groups sponsored by foreign governments and Monday's alert suggests that supply chains may be especially vulnerable. "Actors view supply chains as a weak link that they can exploit to obtain access to better protected targets. CISA and NCSC have seen 'APT' actors scanning the external web sites of targeted companies looking for vulnerabilities in unpatched software," according to the advisory.
Hospitals, research laboratories, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies have all been hit, officials say, and the Department of Health and Human Services -- which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- has been struck by a surge of daily strikes, an official with direct knowledge of the attacks previously told CNN.
Monday's advisory noted that security agencies in the US and UK "have seen large-scale 'password spraying' campaigns against healthcare bodies and medical research organizations."
"Password spraying" is the attempt to access a large number of accounts using commonly known passwords, according to the joint statement released by NCSC and CISA.
"Protecting the healthcare sector is the NCSC's first and foremost priority at this time, and we're working closely with the NHS to keep their systems safe," Paul Chichester, NCSC director of operations, said in a statement.
"By prioritizing any requests for support from health organizations and remaining in close contact with industries involved in the coronavirus response, we can inform them of any malicious activity and take the necessary steps to help them defend against it," he added.
Bryan Ware, CISA assistant director of cybersecurity, echoed those concerns.
"CISA has prioritized our cybersecurity services to healthcare and private organizations that provide medical support services and supplies in a concerted effort to prevent incidents and enable them to focus on their response to COVID-19," he said.
"The trusted and continuous cybersecurity collaboration CISA has with NCSC and industry partners plays a critical role in protecting the public and organizations, specifically during this time as healthcare organizations are working at maximum capacity," Ware added.
The Department of Justice has said they are particularly concerned about attacks by Chinese hackers targeting US hospitals and labs to steal research related to coronavirus.
"It's certainly the logical conclusion of everything I've said," John Demers, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, said when asked specifically about China's actions during an online discussion last month on Chinese economic espionage hosted by Strategic News Service. "We are very attuned to increased cyber intrusions into medical centers, research centers, universities, anybody that is doing research in this area."
"There is nothing more valuable today than biomedical research relating to vaccines for treatments for the coronavirus," Demers added. "It's of great importance not just from a commercial value but whatever countries, company or research lab develops that vaccine first and is able to produce it is going to have a significant geopolitical success story."
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo -- who has been consistently attacking China over the pandemic -- told Fox News last month, "The biggest threat isn't our ability to work with China on cyber, it's to make sure we have the resources available to protect ourselves from Chinese cyberattacks."
But despite an overwhelming consensus that these attacks are occurring at an increasingly high tempo and near universal agreement over the primary state actors, the US and its closest allies have been careful in assigning blame for specific actions.
"If there was that degree of confidence, you'd see more definite language," an official from a country that shares intelligence with the US previously told CNN. "That's not what we're being told."
