(Reuters) – Here’s what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:
U.S. report concludes COVID-19 may have leaked from Wuhan lab -WSJ
A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.
The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred to by the U.S. State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the WSJ report said.
Lawrence Livermore’s assessment drew on a genomic analysis of the COVID-19 virus, the Journal said. Lawrence Livermore declined to comment on the WSJ report.
Top Japanese virologist warns of risks of Tokyo Games
A top Japanese virologist and government adviser, Tohoku University professor Hiroshi Oshitani, has warned of the risks of spreading COVID-19 infections during the Tokyo Olympics, the Times of London reported on Tuesday, the latest high-profile caveat about the global sporting showpiece.
“There are a number of countries that do not have many cases, and a number that don’t have any variants. We should not make the Olympics (an occasion) to spread the virus to these countries,” Oshitani said, noting most countries lack vaccines.
S.Korea’s vaccination drive picks up speed
South Korea administered 857,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses on Monday, setting a daily record in its inoculation drive that took its vaccination rate to 16.4% for a first dose, data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) showed.
Daily new infections have held stubbornly in a range of 400 to 700 for the past few weeks, making the government pull back from plans to relax social distancing rules. Everyday interactions with family, friends and co-workers at home and workplaces were among the major risks of transmission, as were night spots and karaoke bars, the KDCA said.
Bots are disseminating much COVID-19 misinformation
Automated computer programs, or “bots,” are spreading a lot of COVID-19 misinformation on social media, new research confirms. Bots are easy to spot, said Dr. John Ayers of the University of California, Davis. “You just look for coordinated behavior, like Facebook groups sharing the exact same content within seconds,” he said.
The study analyzed 299,925 posts made to 563 Facebook groups, identifying groups that seemed especially susceptible to bot influence. Where bots had the most influence, the posts sharing a link to a study in which masks were found to protect against COVID-19 were 2.3 times more likely to report false results and 2.5 times more likely to make conspiratorial claims than those showing up on groups least influenced by bots.
New antibody drug appears promising in mouse studies
An experimental new type of antibody drug from IGM Bioscience Inc may be more potent at inhibiting the coronavirus and its variants than antibody therapies currently in use, research in mice suggests.
Current antibody drugs use so-called IgG antibodies, which are bivalent (two-armed) – meaning they can simultaneously attach themselves to two of the spikes the coronavirus uses to break into cells. The IgM antibody is 10-valent (10-armed), so it can bind up to 10 viral spike proteins at the same time, said Zhiqiang An of Texas Medical Center in Houston and Pei-Yong Shi of University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, who are among the authors of a report in Nature.
The drug must still be tested in humans to gauge its actual impact on COVID-19 treatment, An said.
(Compiled by Karishma Singh; Editing by Tom Hogue)
