World scientists meet to fight rechristened Covid-19
Geneva, Switzerland - Scientists from around the world are reviewing how the novel coronavirus is transmitted and possible vaccines at a World Health Organization (WHO) conference that kicked off on Tuesday.
“What matters most is stopping the outbreak and saving lives. With your support, that’s what we can do together,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at the twoday Geneva gathering.
WHO said some 400 scientists were taking part.
Participants will also discuss the source of the virus, which is thought to have originated in bats and reached humans via another animal such as snakes or pangolins. There is no specific treatment or vaccine against the virus, which can cause respiratory failure.
Tedros, who has repeatedly urged countries affected to share their data, called for global ‘solidarity’.
“That is especially true in relation to sharing of samples and sequences. To defeat this outbreak, we need open and equitable sharing, according to the principles of fairness and equity,” he said.
“We hope that one of the outcomes of this meeting will be an agreed roadmap for research around which researchers and donors will align,” Tedros said.
Several companies and institutes in Australia, China, France, Germany and the United States are racing to develop a vaccine - a process that normally takes years.
Asked whether scientists from Taiwan would be allowed to take part in this week’s Geneva conference, WHO officials said that they would do so but only online - along with colleagues from other parts of China. While the WHO does not deal with Taiwan directly and only recognises Beijing, Taiwan was often allowed to attend annual assemblies and sideline meetings as an observer. But in recent years it has been frozen out as Beijing takes an increasingly combative stance towards democratic Taiwan, which it considers its own territory.
UK team tests virus vaccine on mice
A team of UK scientists believe they are one of the first to start animal testing of a vaccine for the new coronavirus.
Researchers at Imperial College London said their ultimate goal was to have an effective and safe way of halting the SARS-like strain’s spread by the end of the year.
“At the moment we have just put the vaccine that we’ve generated from these bacteria into mice,” Imperial College London researcher Paul McKay said in an interview on Monday.
“We’re hoping that over the next few weeks we’ll be able to determine the response that we can see in those mice, in their blood, their antibody response to the coronavirus.” Scientists across the world are racing to develop a way to stamp out a new strain of a well-known virus that has been successfully combatted in the past.
Imperial College London said it cannot be sure how advanced other teams’ research is at the moment, but the animal tests they began running on Monday were one of the first.
Britain has recorded eight cases and been forced to shut down two branches of a medical centre in the southeast city of Brighton where at least two staff members tested positive.
But coming up with a vaccine is a laborious process that usually involves years of animal testing and clinal trials on humans.
Regulators must then make sure that the vaccine is both sufficiently safe and effective to be mass produced.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus