THE Magh Mela, the annual Hindu pilgrimage to Prayagraj, India, usually attracts around 10 million people. Officials announced last month that it will go ahead as planned this winter—despite the country’s high number of new COVID-19 cases…
This article first appeared in National Geographic on 12 November 2020. To continue reading, click here.
LAST week Europe registered 1.5m new cases of Covid-19 – a record – making it once again the centre of the pandemic. The UK is not exempt, and England will enter a new lockdown from Thursday 5 November. From the outside, it might seem the continent is in the grip of a second wave that is ramping rapidly towards its peak. But it is not one wave, it’s many local waves, and that is crucial in understanding how to rein it in and prevent the same thing happening again…
This article first appeared in The Guardian on 2 November 2020. To continue reading, click here.
IT started badly, with gag orders, cover-ups and ignored offers of help from overseas, but then the Chinese government seized the narrative. It reined in the burgeoning epidemic of Covid-19 at home, and started exporting its rapidly accumulating scientific knowledge of the disease to the rest of the world. Chinese science has often been marginalised and even mistrusted in the west. But will the pandemic change its standing in the world…?
This article first appeared in The Observer on 11 October 2020. To continue reading, click here.
A significant proportion of patients who develop life-threatening forms of Covid-19 have genetic or immunological defects that impair their ability to fight the virus, research has found…
This article first appeared in The Guardian on 24 September 2020. To continue reading, click here.
SCIENTISTS have had eyes on Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, since the beginning of this pandemic. They can see it is evolving, but it is happening at a glacial pace compared with two other viruses with pandemic potential: those that cause flu and Aids. That is good news for efforts to develop vaccines and treatments, but scientists remain wary that anything could still happen…
This article first appeared in The Guardian on 18 September 2020. To continue reading, click here.