Scientists have used an AI tool to identify which animals are most likely to contract and spread mutated versions of Covid-19. The model highlighted both pets and wild animals as likely reservoirs for the virus.
Using information about their habitats and various biological traits, researchers at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York developed the machine learning tool to figure out which animals had the particular ACE2 protein that the coronavirus was most likely to latch onto.
Out of 5,400 tested, the scientists narrowed it down to 540 mammalian species.
Some of its predictions have been previously documented as transmission risks, for instance, dogs, cats and bats, while farm animals like pigs and exotic zoo animals were surprise additions.
Other expected additions are minks, Sunda pangolins, and 35 species of bats – which are together ranked among the top 10% of animals most likely to spread the virus, in line with lab results.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal, also ranked water buffalo, a number of primates, including gorillas and 76 rodent species as being more susceptible to infection.
The researchers taught the AI to identify patterns between rates of transmission and some 60 ecological and biological traits collected by earlier studies, including the overlap between the animal and human habitats as well as their respective lifespans, diets, and sizes.
Previously, the specific amino acid sequences had only been mapped out in around 300 species, including about 143 mammals — and figuring out which ones are more prone to infection is key to predicting the spread of the virus, researchers said.
Arinjay Banerjee at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada told the New Scientist that the results will help researchers “track viral infections and the possible emergence of animal-adapted coronavirus variants” around the world. Barbara Han, who led the study, said predictions needed to be followed up with systematic surveillance and lab studies.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Protesters thronged the streets of Australian cities on Saturday, demanding an end to what they called the “tyranny” and “oppression” of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and the proposed expansion of the government’s pandemic powers.
In Melbourne, Sky News reporter Sophie Elsworth described “tens of thousands of people streaming through the streets.” The march came after a week of smaller protests aimed at Victoria Premier Dan Andrews’ controversial pandemic bill, which if approved by the state’s legislature would allow Andrews and Health Minister Martin Foley to declare an indefinite state of emergency and issue public health orders by decree – including “any order… that the minister believes is reasonably necessary to protect public health.”
Tens of thousands of people keep streaming through the streets. Many I’ve spoken to are concerned about the state govt, Premier, vaccine mandates, the pandemic bill & what future holds for their kids. #melbourneprotestpic.twitter.com/smexulQ4ts
Should the bill pass, it would allow Andrews to target certain classes of people with these orders, categorizing them by age, occupation, or vaccination status. Fines for noncompliance would range from up to AU$21,800 for people and AU$109,000 for businesses.
Alternative media sources claimed that more than 100,000 people showed up to protest. However, the demonstration remained free of the violent clashes seen at protests in Melbourne in recent months.
“Australia has been willing to send troops to all parts of the world to help people become free,” one military veteran told a crowd of listeners during the protest. “To now be fighting oppression here in our own country, it’s saddening.”
Melbourne Australia 🇦🇺
An Aussie veteran is calling former servicemen and cops who have sworn an oath to Australia to stand up against the tyranny 👊 pic.twitter.com/4RsoRMjoJE
Huge numbers of protesters also turned out in Sydney, and although more than 600 police officers were deployed to watch over the gathering, no arrests were made, 9News reported.
Holding signs decrying state “tyranny,” the demonstrators chanted “freedom” and called for the firing of state politicians who have implemented a two-tier system where the unvaccinated are denied many of the privileges extended to the fully jabbed.
Similarly massive gatherings took place in Adelaide, Brisbane, and Perth, with no notable incidents of violence or police action. Further afield, protests are taking place in more than 120 cities around the world this weekend, in a loosely coordinated event dubbed the ‘Worldwide Rally For Freedom’ by activists.
Thousands of people have descended across Rundle Park today as part of an Adelaide freedom rally. Some of those in the crowd say they have lost their job as a result of mandated vaccinations in their sector. @9NewsAdelpic.twitter.com/YdzvxYJhqF
At least ten people have been killed and several wounded by security forces during mass demonstrations in Sudan against the recent military coup, a medics organization has said.
“The coup forces used live bullets heavily in different areas of the capital and there are tens of gunshot injuries, some of them in serious condition,” the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors (CCSD) said in a statement.
The group of medics, which supports the protest movement, said several of the injured were in critical condition. It reported ten deaths across Bahri, Omdurman and the capital Khartoum.
According to AFP, citing witnesses, security forces also fired tear gas at protesters in the capital.
Although internet services have been disrupted and telephone lines cut since the military coup on October 25, thousands of people made it to the streets of major cities.
The Sudanese Professionals Association, which also supports the demonstrators, said people were witnessing “excessive repression” and that there was a “deliberate interruption of voice and internet communications services.”
Videos posted on social media show protesters wrapping up in national flags, chanting anti-military mottos and demanding the release of activists detained by the military since the takeover. Resistance committees across Sudan adopted the Liverpool Football Club’s chant ‘You Will Never Walk Alone’ as their slogan, which has already become a popular hashtag on Twitter.
“The street is calling Thwra (revolution), The revolution says Madaniya (civilian gov)”
On October 25, following a long period of tensions between Sudan’s military and civilian-led government, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan announced the dissolution of both the Sovereign Council and the transitional government, declaring a state of emergency. The apparent military coup immediately prompted mass protests across the country.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Protests against renewed Covid-19 restrictions turned violent in The Hague. The unrest comes a day after several demonstrators in another Dutch city, Rotterdam, were injured amid police gunfire.
Seven people were arrested after fierce clashes broke out between law enforcement and anti-lockdown demonstrators in The Hague, the seat of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on Saturday.
A video shared on social media shows protesters lighting firecrackers that sparked multiple fires, causing the skies in the city to glow an eerie red.
The Hague burns🔥, home of international court of justice, the seat of Dutch cabinet and 3rd largest city in Netherlands pic.twitter.com/8gjqu2sE60
Dutch police reported that five of its officers were injured in the showdown with rioters. One officer was taken to hospital with a knee injury and concussion. Two others “suffered hearing damage,” while another two suffered injuries to their hands.
The chaotic scenes in the Netherlands’ third-largest city unfolded a day after a protest against reimposed Covid-19 restrictions in Rotterdam was marred by violence. Over 50 people were arrested in the city and three were injured after police opened fire in a bid to quell the unrest. Police later claimed that officers were “compelled to shoot at targets” to protect themselves. The three injured protesters remain in hospital, and their condition is unknown.
Protests have swept through a number of Dutch cities after the Netherlands became the first country in Western Europe since summer to go into a partial lockdown last week. Tensions soared further after the government banned New Year’s Eve fireworks displays and the Dutch parliament backed the introduction of the so-called 2G system, which would bar the unvaccinated and those who have not recently recovered from the virus from a long list of public places if introduced.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
An exoplanet some 70% the mass of Jupiter and about 1.4 times its size has been discovered by astronomers at India’s Physical Research Laboratory (PRL). The behemoth is 752 light years away from Earth, and has an incredible orbit.
The new discovery was revealed by the Indian Space Research Organization on Tuesday in a statement saying the country’s PRL Advanced Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search (PARAS) had measured the movements of the newly-discovered exoplanet between December 2020 and March 2021.
The planet, named either HD 82139 or TOI 1789 depending on which cataloguing method is used, is ultra-hot – with a surface temperature up to 2,000 degrees Kelvin.
India’s PRL Advanced Radial-velocity Abu-sky Search (PARAS), an optical fiber-fed spectrograph, observed t he exoplanet and its movements from the Mt. Abu Observatory, according to the space agency. Not only is the planet ultra-hot, but it is also one of the closest to an orbiting star yet discovered.
The measurements obtained via PARAS were confirmed by Germany’s TCES spectrograph in April, and further verified by independent photometric observations from the PRL’s 43cm telescope, also located at Mt. Abu.
The exoplanet has an unusually quick orbit – a mere 3.2 days. The pace indicates that its distance from its host star is one-tenth the distance between Mercury and the Sun. This makes the exoplanet one of fewer than 10 such solar systems discovered thus far. Given the closeness to its host star – an aging orb 1.5 times the mass of the Sun – the new planet is also one of the lowest density planets yet discovered.
Planets so close to their host stars, with a distance less than 0.1 AU and masses between 0.25 to several times the mass of Jupiter, are known as “hot-Jupiters.”
The Indian space agency hailed the detection of the new planet as an opportunity to “enhance our understanding of various mechanisms responsible for inflation in hot-Jupiters and the formation and evolution of planetary systems around evolving and aging stars.” It is the second planet to be discovered by PARAS, with a previous discovery taking place in 2018.
After vowing to retaliate against Lithuania’s move to allow Taiwan open a “representative office” in Vilnius, Beijing has announced it is downgrading diplomatic relations with the Baltic state.
In a statement on Sunday, the Chinese foreign ministry said that China’s diplomatic relations with Lithuania will be formally lowered to the level of charge d’affaires, while blasting Vilnius for setting a “bad international precedent” by giving the island the green light to open its mission in the Lithuanian capital.
The ministry went on to accuse Vilnius of undermining the One China principle and the principle of neutrality in bilateral relations, explaining its decision to demote relations by citing the need to “safeguard its sovereignty and the basic norms of international relations.”
“The Lithuanian government must bear all the consequences arising from this,” the ministry said, while calling on Vilnius to “correct its mistakes immediately.”
“No matter how the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces distort facts and reverse black and white, they cannot change the historical fact that the mainland and Taiwan belong to the same China,” the ministry asserted.
The move comes just two days after Beijing went on a verbal offensive against the Baltic country, warning that pushback for its cozying up to Taiwan would be imminent. “As to what necessary measures China will take, you may wait and see,” it said at the time.
Lithuania and China have been embroiled in a diplomatic row and have not maintained relations at ambassadorial level since September. After the Baltic state revealed that it would be opening a de facto Taiwanese embassy, China withdrew its ambassador from the country in August. Vilnius followed suit the following month.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The Swedish government has announced plans to introduce mandatory Covid-19 passes starting next month, amid rising infection rates in Europe. The passes will be required to attend any indoor event with 100 or more participants.
The upcoming introduction of mandatory coronavirus vaccine passes was announced by Health Minister Lena Hallengren on Wednesday.
Citing the ongoing surge in coronavirus cases across Europe – which has not hit the country itself yet – the minister stressed the need to be ready for the new wave of infections, projected to reach Sweden mid-December.
“The spread is increasing in Europe. We haven’t seen it yet in Sweden, but we are not isolated,” Hallengren told a news conference. “We need to be able to use vaccination certificates.”
Starting from December 1, the documents confirming a person’s vaccination status will be a requirement to enter any indoor event with 100 or more people in attendance. Sweden already boasts high vaccination rates, with 85% of its citizens aged over 16 having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Over 81% have received two shots or more, public health data shows.
Earlier in the day, the country’s health authorities backtracked on a highly controversial decision to stop testing fully vaccinated people who showed symptoms of Covid. The recommendation was rolled out in October, leading to a 35% decline in Covid-19 tests taken.
“The Public Health Agency has decided to recommend that the regions offer testing to everyone who is 6 years and older who gets symptoms that may be COVID-19,” the health authority said in a statement.
Sweden bucked the trend among European governments in its approach to handling the pandemic, electing not to impose widespread lockdowns. Having relied primarily on voluntary measures and social distancing, the country displayed several times higher death rates per capita than its Nordic neighbors, though it still fared better than many European countries, registering some 1.18 million cases and just over 15,000 coronavirus deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
A gunman injured two civilians, one of them fatally, and two police officers before being shot dead by security forces near Jerusalem’s Western Wall on Sunday morning, Israeli police said.
The civilian victims were taken to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. One, who was in his 30s, succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. The other, a 46-year-old, is said to have suffered moderate injuries. Two police officers were hurt by shrapnel.
Two civilians were critically and seriously wounded this morning, Sunday, and two policemen were lightly wounded in a shooting attack in the area of the Chain Gate near the Western Wall and the entrance to the Temple Mount. pic.twitter.com/MRN6MLckj3
In a video clip shared on social media and purportedly filmed at the scene, multiple gunshots could be heard amid agitated shouting. Security officers could then be seen standing around what appears to be a dead body. Witnesses speculated it was that of a “terrorist.”
Scenes and sounds of shooting in the Old City of Jerusalem captured on Live Cam. Initial reports are attack is near the Temple Mount area 2 Israelis wounded one apparently seriously the terrorist has been neutralised pic.twitter.com/UKWSOqCu8D
— ElBluemountain MossadDolphin 🇮🇱🐬🇮🇱🐬🇮🇱 (@EBluemountain1) November 21, 2021
The gunman, whose identity was not immediately disclosed, was killed during the incident. Police said he had used a homemade submachine gun.
The Philippine government has accused the Chinese Coast Guard of unleashing water cannon on two supply ships in a disputed stretch of the South China Sea, claiming its boats were blocked and forced to turn around.
Manila’s Department of Foreign Affairs detailed the encounter in a statement on Wednesday, alleging that a pair of supply boats en route to the Ayungin Shoal – also known as the Second Thomas Shoal – were stopped by three Chinese vessels and “water cannoned” before they could reach their destination.
“Fortunately, no one was hurt; but our boats had to abort their resupply mission,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said, adding that the department had conveyed its “outrage, condemnation and protest of the incident” to Beijing’s envoy to the Philippines, Huang Xilian.
The acts of the Chinese Coast Guard vessels are illegal. China has no law enforcement rights in and around these areas. They must take heed and back off.
Though both China and the Philippines claim territorial rights to the Ayungin Shoal, The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in the latter country’s favor in 2016. And despite Chinese objections, the Philippines has occupied the area for much longer, after its military purposely grounded a naval vessel on the shoal in 1999.
[3] I reminded China that a public vessel is covered by the Philippines-United States Mutual Defense Treaty.
Manila was also quick to note that the supply ships are “covered by the Philippines-United States Mutual Defense Treaty,” a pact inked with Washington in 1951 that calls for a US military response to any attack on the country, including “island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific Ocean, its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft.”
Beijing so far has not commented on the alleged run-in.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
As infections are rising again, scientists all around the world are rushing to fight the danger, offering a choice of new treatments and unusual variants of vaccines.
Levels of contagion are setting new records, hospitals are overwhelmed, governments are starting to introduce lockdowns, and not only for unvaccinated people – the picture of the fight against Covid-19 looks quite disappointing. However, there’s still a place for good news: Research teams report positive results while trialling new medicines and vaccine types.
Nasal vaccines
Vaccination will remain one of the most effective tools against Covid-19. As Professor David Dockrell, from the Center for Inflammation Research of the University of Edinburgh, told RT, “vaccines will continue to be a central part of how we control the virus.”
“If we can dampen down the number of infections, and the severity of infections, and also the extent to which the virus can replicate in people when they become infected, then we are slowing down the ability of the virus to change and to mutate,” he explains.
So I think the vaccines still will be a very important part of the preventive strategy. It’s vital that they are available to all the world’s population, irrespective of where people live, and the wealth of the country in which they live.
However, vaccination doesn’t always mean you have to get an injection. For instance, several intranasal Covid-19 vaccines are currently being developed. As the virus gets into the body through the nose, a nasal spray or drops are aimed to produce mucosal immune response and prevent it from getting into the lungs.
In India, a vaccine of this type is already completing Phase 2 of clinical trials. In Russia, a nasal vaccine is undergoing a clinical trial on volunteers. In Thailand, a home-developed product is expected to be trialed on humans next spring. In the US, Universities of Houston and Stanford recently reported good results of their experiments carried out on mice.
Intranasal vaccines can have several potential benefits compared to inoculation.
“They would be easier to use, because they can be self-administered. They wouldn’t need a nurse or clinical settings,” Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology Marcello Ferrada de Noli explained to RT. As a result, he says, there’s hope that fewer people will be reluctant to be immunized. Not so many of us find it pleasant to get a jab – and after all, there are those who are just afraid of needles. Also, it would be much easier to vaccinate children with nasal substances.
However, what concerns Prof. de Noli the most is the duration of the effect of a vaccine of this type. Still, scientists can’t say for sure whether a nasal substance may completely replace a shot. According to Alexander Gintsburg, the head of Moscow’s Gamaleya Center biomedical research institute, which created the Sputnik V vaccine, the nasal version they are working on would serve for an additional protection against the virus, but would not replace the injections.
Chew the virus away?
A nasal vaccine is not the only one being developed. In summer, it was revealed that Russian Defense Ministry scientists were creating a ‘chewing gum’ vaccine, also targeting the mucosal immune response. Meanwhile, a UK firm announced this month that it would conduct a human trial of a skin patch that uses T-cells to confront the virus. Developers hope it would offer longer-lasting immunity than the existing vaccines. Work on a similar project is being done in the University of Queensland, Australia.
While it all looks so promising, Prof. de Noli warns that it would still take a lot of time until these products become available to the public. “I think that discoveries in this field are a very good thing. But if we say ‘We discovered a new type of vaccine’, people will say ‘Aha, so I’m going to wait’. But we need to vaccinate people now,” he points out.
Improving Covid treatment
Vaccines are not a silver bullet, unfortunately, given the not-so-high level of global immunization and the constantly emerging new strains of the virus. “People might get infected despite having had a vaccine, but I still think the vaccine strategy is going to be central to how we manage this kind of virus going forward,” Prof. Dockrell says. “But we will have other strategies that will be very important. We will have other elements. When we put them all together, it gives us the best opportunity that people can live with coronaviruses, and hopefully, the mortality can be limited to much lower extense than what we’ve sadly seen in the last eighteen months.”
Monoclonal antibodies will be central to the ongoing vaccine strategy, Prof. Dockrell explains. These are the antibodies similar to those the body uses to fight the virus. They are produced in labs and given via infusion or injection to boost the patient’s response against certain diseases. Monoclonal antibody treatment is used for people under a high risk of developing severe infection (including older patients 65+ years old or those with chronic medical conditions). It’s already being used in the US, following last year’s FDA approval. Earlier in November, the European Medicines agency recommended authorizing two monoclonal antibody medicines.
In October, UK’s AstraZeneca reported positive results of a Phase 3 study of its antibody combination, which, according to developers, is highly effective in both prevention and treatment of coronavirus.
Researchers are also working on a possibility to save Covid-infected patients from the so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – a situation when the immune system reacts so intensely that kills not only the virus, but the whole organism itself. A drug to ‘calm the storm’ was registered in Russia this year, and it’s already being used on patients.
Another way to fight Covid-19 is to use antiviral drugs. When the pandemic started, medics had to use something already existing (like anti-influenza Favipiravir) or something being authorized for emergency use (like remdesivir). Now, more than a year on, the work to create a special drug to specifically cure Covid-19 is giving its results. This month, Russia registered its first injectable anti-Covid medicine. A bit earlier, the UK became the first country to approve an antiviral pill produced by the US-based companies Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Another American firm, Pfizer, got positive results from trials of its drug of the same kind. Both firms hope that with a drug in the form of a pill it would be easier to treat people at home.
Appreciating all the efforts on the field of developing anti-Covid treatment, Prof. de Noli points out that still, the key issue now is to reduce the spreading of the virus. “The new medicines are developed for people who already got the disease,” he says.
But we need to prevent people from getting the infection, not let them get infected because we have some new medicine that can cure them.
The same idea is echoed by scientists all over the world quoted in plenty of articles dedicated to the medical gains: it’s great to have the treatment, but none of the drugs may substitute vaccination, as first and foremost, humanity has to adopt preventive measures and stop the pandemic.
