22 articles from SUNDAY 24.1.2021

Vaccine experts call for clarity on UK's 12-week Covid jab interval

British Society for Immunology calls for a robust programme monitoring the body’s immune responseExperts have called for greater clarity on the monitoring in place to assess the 12-week dosing interval for Covid-19 vaccines, as the row over delayed second doses continues.The UK’s coronavirus vaccination programme was shifted late last year to prioritise administering the first dose to as many...

Lost touch: how a year without hugs affects our mental health

Humans are designed to touch and be touched – which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?There’s only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before...

Rachel Clarke: ‘NHS staff are burning with frustration and grief at this second wave’

The palliative care doctor and author on a year of Covid in UK hospitals and her hopes for the vaccine ‘The air reeks of invisible danger’ - read an extract from Rachel Clarke’s pandemic memoir BreathtakingYou wrote Breathtaking towards the start of the pandemic when you couldn’t sleep. Did you envisage that the world would still be looking the way it does almost a year later?No, I truly...

‘No more monkey selfies’: scientists told images could drive illegal pet trade

New guidelines say pictures posted on social media by primatologists and researchers can inadvertently damage conservation effortsCelebrity primatologists and scientists have been urged not to post selfies with chimpanzees, orangutans and other primates on social media to help conservation efforts for threatened species.Cuddling baby monkeys on camera and sharing Instagram posts interacting with...

Behind the numbers: what does it mean if a Covid vaccine has ‘90% efficacy’? | David Spiegelhalter

Confusion surrounds the vaccines’ effectiveness. The leading Cambridge professor clarifies the data behind the trialsImagine 100 people are ill with Covid-19. “90% efficacy” means if only they’d had the vaccine, on average only 10 would have got ill. Vaccine efficacy is the relative reduction in the risk: whatever your risk was before, it is reduced by 90% if you get vaccinated. There is a...

I’ve had my first vaccine jab. It gives me hope of liberation... but not yet

Exactly a year after his first story about coronavirus, our science editor received the Pfizer injection last week. Here he reflects on a remarkable scientific achievementCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageI marked a grim anniversary in an unexpected manner last week. On 18 January last year, I wrote my first story about a mysterious disease that had struck Wuhan, in...

The five: emotional contagion

The idea that emotions can ‘spread’ from one person to another seems to be taking hold in the psychological worldLast week, scientists from the universities of Oxford and Birmingham published research describing how teenagers’ moods were affected by those of others around them – and that bad moods were more potent. They also found that when a teenager “catches” a low mood from a...

A world first in circadian clock manipulation

A new method developed by Nagoya University and Groningen University scientists allows for reversible manipulation of the circadian clock period using a light-activated switch. Compounds which act on clock proteins were identified through large-scale chemical screening, and modified to include a light-activated switch, which was further modified to react to non-harmful visible light, creating a...

Continued strict control measures needed to reduce new COVID-19 strains

A group of scientists is calling on governments to consider the continued use of strict control measures as the only way to reduce the evolution and spread of new COVID-19 variants. The experts in evolution, virology, infectious disease and genomics warn that while governments are negotiating a 'precarious balance' between saving the economy and preventing COVID-19 fatalities, stronger action now...

The Lancet: World failing to address health needs of 630 million women and children affected by armed conflict

Armed conflicts are becoming increasingly complex and protracted and a growing threat to humanitarian access and the delivery of essential health services, affecting at least 630 million women and children--over 8% of the world's population--in 2017, according to a new four-paper Series exposing the far-reaching effects of modern warfare on women's and children's health, published today in The...