Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi work in their lab at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, where their research team developed a vaccine candidate that may be able to protect against COVID-19. (Baylor College of Medicine Photo)
If the project proceeds as planned, Baylor and its partners could repurpose a vaccine candidate originally created to counter a different coronavirus-based disease known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, to fight off COVID-19.
Sen.Maria Cantwell chats with GeekWire Chairman Jonathan Sposato at the 2015 GeekWire Summit. (GeekWire Photo)
Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is one of the sponsors of bipartisan legislation aimed at ensuring that coronavirus tracing apps protect consumer privacy.
Such systems typically involve monitoring a user’s movements, and issuing an alert if it’s determined that the user has previously come in close contact with another user who tests positive for COVID-19. The proximity data is typically uses Bluetooth data to monitor proximity.
Officials advise sticking to health guidelines during protests. (Public Health – Seattle & King County Graphic)
Public health officials for Seattle and King County today acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis sparked by last week’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other confrontations across the country — and said the continuing coronavirus pandemic is making the situation more difficult.
“We understand the difficult choices that people were faced with this past weekend,” Public Health – Seattle & King County said today in a blog posting. “Many in our community grappled with attending protests to stand up against these injustices while also wanting to keep our community safe from further spread of COVID-19.”
Officials urged residents to stick with the guidelines that they’ve been recommending for months, including the advice to wear face coverings, stay at least 6 feet away from others, and avoid large gatherings if you’re ill.
“Outdoor gatherings are lower risk than indoor gatherings,” the public health agency said in its Q&A. “The larger the gathering, and the longer you’re there, the higher the risk of catching or spreading COVID-19.”
The agency said you should also “do your best to avoid situations where people are shouting or singing, as these activities can spread more virus into the air.”
A transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S. Virus particles are emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles are key to their ability to infect human cells. (NIAID-RML Photo)
Two newly published studies shed light on the origins and spread of the coronavirus pandemic, starting with bats and pangolins in China and ending up with New York’s dramatically deadly outbreak.
One study, published today in the open-access journal Science Advances, analyzed 43 genome sequences from three strains of coronavirus similar to the one that causes COVID-19 in humans. These strains were identified in bats and in pangolins, anteater-like animals prized for their scales. The two pangolins that yielded samples of coronavirus were smuggled into China and seized by customs officials.
The type of coronavirus that has caused the human pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, is more similar to bat viruses than to pangolin viruses. But a key piece of genetic material, relating to the ability of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to bind itself to human cells, was identified in pangolin viruses but not in bat viruses.
None of the viruses that were studied is likely to be in the direct line leading to the virus that made the leap to humans, but their diversity suggests that SARS-CoV-2 went through cross-species evolution before making the leap to humans.
This visualization shows the routes by which variants of coronavirus are thought to have come into the U.S. and Europe. (Nextstrain Graphic)
Epidemiologists are coming around to the view that the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S., involving a Snohomish County traveler who got sick in mid-January, may not have been the one that touched off the West Coast’s coronavirus outbreak.
The Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant, awarded on April 30, follows up on an earlier Phase I grant focusing on molecular glue. Such molecules are designed to “glue” a target protein onto another type of protein known as an E3 ubiquitin ligase. The ubiquitin molecules serve as chemical tags that basically tell the cell, “Get rid of the protein that I’m connected to.”
“It’s a way to get rid of what would otherwise be more or less ‘undruggable’ protein targets,” A-Alpha Bio CEO David Younger told GeekWire.
Workers assemble coronavirus test kits in a warehouse in Tumwater, Wash. (Washington State Department of Health Photo)
Ten days after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee took the Trump administration to task for failing to send enough supplies for coronavirus test kits, public health officials say the gap is closing — and the day is coming closer when anyone in the state who wants a test will truly be able to get one.
Charissa Fotinos, deputy chief medical officer for the Washington State Health Care Authority, said supplies are also tight for other items that have to go into every test kit — ranging from the vials of transport media into which the sample swabs are placed, to the little pads that are supposed to absorb any leakage. The items are assembled into kits in a warehouse in Tumwater, Wash., by teams that include state employees as well as National Guard soldiers and volunteers.
“Right now we do have most of those things to keep us for a couple of days of making specimen collection kits, and we’ve ordered more,” Fotinos told GeekWire. “So we’re definitely in a better place than we were two weeks ago. But I can’t tell you that the supply stream will continue as strongly as it is.”
Contact tracing is a key part of the strategy for corralling coronavirus. (University of Washington Photo)
The Washington State Department of Health is in the early stages of a massive effort to interview COVID-19 patients and track down those who might have been infected by those patients.
Contact tracing is a tried and true technique, typically used to stem the spread of infectious diseases ranging from tuberculosis to measles to gonorrhea. Now it’s part of the strategy for getting the coronavirus pandemic under control.
“Contact tracing is going to be an essential part of our reopening and containment efforts moving forward,” said Janet Baseman, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health. “We need to trace every contact possible, because every contact counts in stopping this disease.”
An analysis of 96,000 cases of COVID-19, published today in The Lancet, shows that patients who were treated with the antimalarial drugs chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine had a death rate that was roughly twice as high as for patients who weren’t.
Thomas Lynch, the president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discusses the impact of the coronavirus outbreak during a GeekWire forum. (GeekWire Photo via Zoom / YouTube)
Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center already has dozens of scientists working on infectious diseases, including COVID-19 — but the center’s president and director, Thomas Lynch, says the research community is going to have to kick things up a notch to head off future pandemics.
His prescription? Create institutions like Fred Hutch that are devoted to virology.
“I feel strongly about this,” Lynch, a veteran medical doctor and researcher who took on the Hutch’s top post less than four months ago, said today during an online conversation presented via Zoom for GeekWire members. “I think virology needs a ‘cancer centers’ program, OK?”
