Pregnant women being infected with COVID-19 at higher rates; UK variant lasting longer
The following is a roundup by Reuters of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.
Pregnant women infected at higher rate
Pregnant women become infected with the new coronavirus at higher rates than other adults, according to new data.
Between March and June in Washington state, for every 1,000 pregnant women there were 14 cases of COVID-19, compared with seven cases among every 1,000 non-pregnant adults aged 20 to 39, researchers found. After accounting for other risk factors, the COVID-19 rate in pregnant women there was 70 percent higher than in non-pregnant adults, according to a report in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Pregnant women in non-white racial/ ethnic groups were particularly vulnerable. When compared to women in Washington State overall who delivered live births in 2018, the proportion of COVID-19 cases in pregnancy among most racial and ethnic minority groups during the pandemic study period was two to four times higher. In addition, while people receiving medical care in a language other than English accounted for roughly eight percent of the general population, they accounted for roughly 30 percent of the pregnant women with COVID-19. Added to the fact that pregnant women with COVID-19 have higher rates of severe illness, the new study “strongly suggests that pregnant people should be broadly prioritized for COVID-19 vaccine allocation,” the researchers concluded.
Longer infections
The reason the coronavirus variant first identified in the UK is more transmissible than earlier versions of the virus may be that it spends more time inside infected people, giving them more time to spread the virus, according to a small study.
Researchers measured viral loads daily in 65 patients with COVID-19, including seven who were infected with the UK variant. The amount of virus carried by patients was similar in the two groups. But among individuals infected with the variant designated B.1.1.7, the average duration of infection was 13.3 days, compared to 8.2 days in those infected by an older version of the coronavirus. The time until patients’ viral loads peaked was also longer with the UK variant: 5.3 days, versus 2 days with earlier variants.
“The findings are preliminary, as they are based on seven B.1.1.7 cases,” the researchers cautioned in a report posted without peer review on a Harvard University website. “However, if borne out by additional data, a longer isolation period than the currently recommended 10 days after symptom onset may be needed to effectively interrupt secondary infections by this variant,” they said.
Stronger bonds
Scientists are learning more about what might be making coronavirus variants identified in South Africa and Brazil less vulnerable to vaccines and current antibody therapies.
Researchers already know that these variants carry a worrisome mutation called E484K. A new study found that after the spike on the virus breaks into receptors on cells, the variant has “more favorable electrostatic interactions,” or electric charges, strengthening bonds that keep it tightly fastened to the infected cell.
In addition, according to a report posted Wednesday on biorxiv ahead of peer review, the shape of the spike protein is different in the location of the E484K mutation, helping the spike bind more tightly to “receptor” sites on the infected cells. The authors also confirmed that six antibodies that neutralize other versions the virus are significantly less effective against variants with the E484K mutation. They discovered this is mainly because the electric charges that bind the antibodies to the spike are not strong enough. These findings, they say, will be “of great significance” for development of effective vaccines and antibodies.
Things just got hairy at Princeton.
Researchers at the US Princeton University found they could coat a liquid elastic on the outside of a disc and spin it to form useful, complex patterns. When spun just right, tiny spindles rise from the material as
it cures.
The spindles grow as the disc accelerates, forming a soft solid that resembles hairs, scitechdaily.com reported.
Inspired by biological designs and rationalized with mathematical precision, the new
method could be used at an industrial scale for production with plastics, glasses, metals and smart materials.
The researchers published their findings on February 22, 2021, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Their technique draws on fairly simple physics but turns an old set of engineering problems into a new manufacturing solution.
The method’s simplicity, cheaper and more sophisticated than conventional molds, comes as part of a major shift toward additive manufacturing.
It also promises to play a key role in developing robotic sensing capabilities and in surfaces that mimic biological patterns – the hairs on a spider leg or on a lotus leaf – deceptively simple structures that provide essential life functions.
“Such patterns are ubiquitous in nature,” said Pierre-thomas Brun, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton and the study’s principal investigator. “Our approach leverages the way these structures form naturally.”
The paper’s authors also include Etienne Jambon-puillet, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton, and Matthieu Royer Piéchaud, formerly of Princeton.
This work was partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DMR-1420541) through the Princeton Center for Complex Materials.
Elementary school children don’t typically venture far from home on their own, but 11-year-old Abou managed to cross a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean, from Africa to Europe, in the hands of strangers.
Abou, from West Africa’s Ivory Coast, boarded an inflatable dinghy alongside four other children, and a mother and her baby, all bound for the Canary Islands, in search of a better life.
They arrived on the island of Fuerteventura in June 2020 after a full day’s journey from southern Morocco, CNN wrote.
For years, migrants and refugees from sub-saharan Africa have followed a wellworn path north, boarding traffickers’ boats in Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria to take them across the Mediterranean to Spain and Italy.
But as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus, many of the traditional migrant routes through Africa have been disrupted, making the Canary Islands – an autonomous Spanish territory some 110 km off the coast of north-western Africa – the new gateway for many trying to make a fresh start in Europe.
Spain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said around 23,000 migrants arrived in the Canary Islands from Africa in 2020 – more than seven times the number of arrivals in 2019. And almost 2,600 of them were, like Abou, unaccompanied minors – more than three times 2019’s numbers – Canary Islands’ government data shows.
That has left authorities there with a challenge: How to care for those who arrive safely. Spain had for years resisted the far-right movements seen in many other European nations, but anti-migrant sentiment has been steadily growing in recent years, alongside the rise of the country’s ultranationalist Vox party.
On the Canary Islands, though, some families are taking part in a scheme run by the local government and SUMAS, a nonprofit organization, by offering temporary foster care for migrant children like Abou.
He now lives on the island of Tenerife with a couple, Victor Afonso Feliciano, 50, and Adelaida Delgado Alonso, 52, the owners of an organic supermarket, who have no children of their own. Abou is the first child the couple have taken in.
“When the program first started, it was about taking in any young child, whether they were a migrant or Spanish,” Afonso Feliciano told CNN. “But we decided specifically from the beginning that our objective was taking in a young child that came from abroad. It was driven by our desire to help change the migrant crisis in our own little way.”
Delgado Alonso said: “They have come because of need. No one gets on a boat at 11 years old, like Abou has, because they are OK. They have taken the risk at sea because they don’t have a future. Abou was lucky he arrived on land because the vast majority don’t make it.”
Poverty levels rising
The pandemic has complicated authorities’ handling of new arrivals, according to Gemma Martinez Soliño, the islands’ deputy minister for human rights.
“The migrant crisis quickly became not only a humanitarian problem but a health one too,” she said. “We had to come up with a system so that we could test all those who were arriving and create spaces where we would quarantine people with the virus.”
While Abou has found a family willing to give him a home, the islands have not been immune to the country’s anti-migration wave.
“Because of COVID, people are frustrated because there is no work,” Martinez Soliño said. “People perceive that there is a social crisis going on ... and so sectors of the population are heeding more xenophobic attitudes which are heightened by fake news, the media and even some local authorities.”
A 2018 report by Impactur Canarias found that more than a third of the islands’
GDP and more than 40 percent of all jobs in the region depend on tourism. COVID-19 has seen the islands’ economy grind to a halt.
And recent data from Oxfam Intermón shows that poverty levels on the islands have grown due to the pandemic.
“It’s really difficult to fight against fear,” Martinez Soliño added. “Fear can be all encompassing. And it’s even more difficult in a population that has barely recovered from the crisis in 2008 and is starting to sense that another one is coming.”
Children between the ages of 6 and 12 – like Abou – are eligible for the local government’s fostering scheme. Those younger than six are eligible for adoption, but only when it is confirmed that they do not have any family members in the European Union (EU), or any documentation.
SUMAS tries to reunite migrant children with their biological families where possible
– it has helped to put Abou in contact with his mother and father, who both live in Paris.
His parents made the journey to Europe via the Mediterranean, travelling from Libya to Italy and from there to France a year before Abou. They raised the money to pay for Abou’s boat journey from Morocco to the Canary Islands, in hopes of a brighter future.
“After the first two weeks of being here, he was able to speak to his parents by phone,” his foster parent Feliciano explained. “He is now able to maintain a relationship with them. He may be able to return to his family, but it does depend on his decision and the situation which they find themselves in.”
“The reality is that it is a painful process, because you get attached emotionally,” Feliciano said. “But this situation isn’t adoption, it is temporary. It’s help from a family that wants to give a child love, care and affection so they can begin living a normal life.”
But many children are too old to take part in the scheme – most minors who arrive are boys aged around 15 or 16.
One such boy is 15-year-old Omar (not his real name) from Senegal, who landed on the island of Tenerife last November. He and a group of migrants spent more than a week traveling aboard a fishing boat with little food or water.
“I felt awful on the journey,” he told CNN. “It was eight days by sea without sleeping or eating well. But now I am happy here. I have been in Spain for three months now and I don’t want to leave. I see myself building a life here, finding a job and having a family.”
Omar lives in a center for child migrants, run by the Canary Islands government. Its young residents are taught Spanish and other professional skills to help them integrate into society.
But the sharp increase in demand for places has squeezed the resources of the local government, forcing it to seek help from the private sector to open new centers.
“At the end of last year ... we did not have enough places to house the children and provide them with the care they needed,” said Martinez Soliño. She said three new centers were opened in hotels that had been left empty because of the pandemic.
“But now we are receiving opposition from members of the public, and it is growing,” she said.