Promising clinical data from Pfizer and BioNTech help the index to a £28bn one-day gainOptimism that a mass rollout of Covid-19 vaccines will lead to an economic recovery lifted stocks in London again on Tuesday, to their highest closing level in over four months.London’s FTSE 100 index of blue-chip shares rallied by nearly 1.8% to finish at 6,296 points, the highest close since 23 June. This...

Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca pledged to make their vaccines available on a not-for-profit basisCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe US drugmaker Pfizer and the German biotech firm BioNTech stand to bring in nearly $13bn (£9.8bn) in global sales from their coronavirus vaccine next year, which will be evenly split between the two companies, according to...

Europe and US create vast facilities for Covid-19 vaccine but poorer nations lack infrastructure, say expertsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageTwo vast football-pitch-sized facilities equipped with hundreds of large freezers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Puurs, Belgium, will be the centres of the huge effort to ship the coronavirus vaccine, developed by US drug giant...

At last, there is hope of an end to this pandemic. Scientists appear to have performed an amazing feat, the rest of us must do our best tooMedicine is only partly a matter of science; it is, very much, the business of people. The inspiring news that a Covid vaccine appears within reach, with interim results showing the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate has 90% efficacy in protecting people from illness,...

My friend and former colleague Tony Trinci, who has died aged 84, was a world expert on fungi whose knowledge was often tapped by commercial enterprises, including Marlow Foods, when it was developing Quorn, and DuPont, which took his advice when adding fungal enzymes to animal feed.Tony was born in Swindon, Wiltshirem where his mother, Beatrice (nee Stefani), a restaurateur, had settled after...

The UK usually has a high take-up for vaccines, experts say, but there are fears over misinformation and scepticismCoronavirus: anti-vaxxers seek to discredit Pfizer’s vaccine Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe spread of scepticism and misinformation about coronavirus and the development of a vaccine for it has raised questions about whether it will pose a threat...

Readers respond to news that an interim analysis has shown Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccine candidate was 90% effective in protecting people from transmission of the virus in global trialsThe media have been awash with stories about the apparent success of the Pfizer Covid vaccine following the publication of preliminary trial outcomes (Hopes rise for end of pandemic as Pfizer says vaccine is 90%...

There are grounds for optimism but also several unknowns around this coronavirus vaccineCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageHopes that the end of the coronavirus pandemic has become nearer have soared after the news that a coronavirus vaccine was found to be 90% effective in global trials.Although there is definite reason to be optimistic, experts have cautioned that the...

Student finds mislabelled fragment of pterosaur, which flew over eastern England up to 66m years agoA fossil that been had languishing in a museum drawer in Brighton, wrongly labelled as a shark fin skeleton, has now been identified as a completely new species of prehistoric flying reptile that soared majestically over what are now the Cambridgeshire fens.Roy Smith, a University of Portsmouth PhD...

Kate Bingham spent more than £670k hiring PR consultants to oversee media strategyCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe UK’s vaccine tsar is to pay almost £700,000 in taxpayers’ money on a team of boutique PR consultants whose secretary is a long-time business associate of Dominic Cummings’ father-in-law.Over the weekend, it was reported that Kate Bingham, the...

A combination of scientific advances and people volunteering for trials has finally offered a light at the end of the tunnelDr Charlotte Summers is a lecturer in intensive care medicine at the University of CambridgeCoronavirus – latest updatesWe could all do with some good news right now. After a long and difficult year of multiple lockdowns and numerous sacrifices, the announcement from Pfizer...

Sars, Mers, now this: we must think hard about how we farm animals that are known hosts of human coronavirusesTwo decades ago, a seminal study from the University of Edinburgh compiled a list of all known human infectious diseases. It found a total of 1,415 different human pathogens, and claimed that 61% were capable of spreading between humans and animals. Today, with the world put on hold by a...

Health secretary says it will be a ‘colossal exercise’ to roll out any vaccine and social distancing must be maintained until it is readyCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage 11.00am GMT Hunt asks about the efficiency of the system.He says the ONS says 52,000 people are getting Covid every day. If they all have around three and a half close contacts, that means there...

Paranthropus robustus walked the earth at roughly the same time as our direct ancestor Homo erectusA two million-year-old skull from a large-toothed distant human cousin has been unearthed at an Australian-led archaeological dig deep in a South African cave system.The discovery is the earliest known and best-preserved example of the small-brained hominin called Paranthropus robustus, La Trobe...

More than 170 teams of researchers are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine. Here is their progressResearchers around the world are racing to develop a vaccine against Covid-19, with more than 170 candidate vaccines now tracked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Continue...

This month marks 20 years of continuous human habitation of space on the ISS. A new set of images by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli and photographer Roland Miller captures the station’s interiors through an artistic, minimalist eye Continue...

From the underrated octopus to Dante, the Italian physicist fuses his deep knowledge of science and the artsWe live in a golden age of science writing, where weighty subjects such as quantum mechanics, genetics and cell theory are routinely rendered intelligible to mass audiences. Nonetheless, it remains rare for even the most talented science writers to fuse their work with a deep knowledge of...

Analysis shows nearly twice as many diagnoses over three months among those testing positive The people living with post-Covid psychiatric disordersCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageNearly one in five people who have had Covid-19 are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder such as anxiety, depression or insomnia within three months of testing positive for the virus,...

Linda Geddes speaks to Prof Jacky Smith about one of Covid-19’s most consistent symptoms: the persistent dry cough. As winter arrives in the northern hemisphere, how do we tell the difference between the possible onset of the virus and the kind of routine coughs normally experienced at this time of year? Continue...

Interim results show vaccine to be 90% effective, but findings have not been peer-reviewed, Australia has only secured enough for five million people, and there are concerns around its storage temperature • Pfizer says vaccine is 90% effective • What has Pfizer’s vaccine trial found? • Vaccine announcement is cause for cautious celebrationNews that pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and partner...