Science

The Washington Post reports: Shutdown orders prevented about 285 million novel coronavirus infections in China and about 60 million in the United States, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion. A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated that the shutdowns saved approximately 3.1 …

STAT News reports: Researchers have begun testing what appears to be the first new medicine developed specifically against Covid-19, in a milestone for drug companies aiming to combat the disease, the medicine’s makers said Monday. The medicine, a human-made antibody against the coronavirus that causes the disease, was discovered by a Vancouver company, AbCellera, and is being developed by Eli …

CNN reports: Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley have officially arrived at the International Space Station. After a historic launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday, the astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft synched up with the space station Sunday morning. The spacecraft made a careful approach, easing its way toward its destination over the course of 19 …

The New York Times reports: The United States opened a new era of human space travel on Saturday as a private company for the first time launched astronauts into orbit, nearly a decade after the government retired the storied space shuttle program in the aftermath of national tragedy. Two American astronauts lifted off at 3:22 p.m. from a familiar setting, …

Axios reports: At 3:22 p.m. ET today, SpaceX is expected to launch NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station for the first time. Why it matters: The liftoff — should it go off without a hitch — will be the first time a private company has launched people to orbit. It will also bring crewed …

Yahoo News reports: Nearly nine years after the last space shuttle flew, NASA and SpaceX are counting down to the next launch to put astronauts into orbit from Florida. The launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will mark the first-ever use of a privately owned spaceship for a crewed orbital launch, and a renaissance …

Yahoo Finance reports: Novavax is the latest biotech company to announce that it is entering its vaccine in clinical trials. It’s recombinant technology, already tested in a late-stage flu vaccine trial, focuses on using DNA from the virus to create a vaccine. The Phase 1 clinical trial in Australia is the first in the Southern Hemisphere, and is focusing on …

Obviously this is an attack on Glorious Leader: The World Health Organization is temporarily pausing tests of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment in order to review safety concerns, the agency’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said Monday. The decision comes after a retrospective review published in The Lancet found that coronavirus patients who took hydroxychloroquine or its related …

“Any time you develop a vaccine, you always remember, you always have a question that you may not get an effective vaccine. Even if you do everything right and you do everything on time, there’s no guarantee you’re going to have an effective vaccine. “So when we talk about having a vaccine that might be available in December or January, …

The Washington Post reports: Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida’s Gold Coast, the entire state of Alabama and several other places in the South that have been rapidly reopening their economies are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus infections over the next four weeks, according to a research team that uses cellphone data to track social mobility and forecast the …

Bloomberg News reports: Researchers are finding evidence that patients who test positive for the coronavirus after recovering aren’t capable of transmitting the infection, and could have the antibodies that prevent them from falling sick again. Scientists from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 Covid-19 survivors who had tested positive for the coronavirus after their illness had …

The Associated Press reports: At least four or five possible vaccines “look pretty promising” and one or two will be ready to begin large-scale testing by July with others to follow soon, NIH Director Francis Collins told The Associated Press. “The big challenge now is to go big and everybody is about ready for that. And we want to be …

The New York Times reports: New York City’s coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country. The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York …

The Associated Press reports: When the still locked-down NYC metropolitan area is included, new infections in the U.S. appear to be declining, according to the AP analysis. It found that the five-day rolling average for new cases has decreased from 9.4 per 100,000 people on April 9 to 8.6 on Monday. But taking the New York metropolitan area out of …

Reuters reports: Government-backed hackers are attacking healthcare and research institutions in an effort to steal valuable information about efforts to contain the new coronavirus outbreak, Britain and the United States said on Tuesday in a joint warning. In a statement, Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said the hackers had targeted …

The New York Times reports: As the climate continues to warm over the next half-century, up to one-third of the world’s population is likely to live in areas that are considered unsuitably hot for humans, scientists said Monday. Currently fewer than 25 million people live in the world’s hottest areas, which are mostly in the Sahara region in Africa with …

Newsweek reports: Scientists have identified an antibody in a lab that they say can prevent the novel coronavirus from infecting cells. The team hopes the antibody could be used to create treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The team, whose research was published in the journal Nature Communications, have been exploring whether what are known as monoclonal …

NBC News reports: British scientists developing a potential vaccine for the coronavirus hope to see a “signal” as to whether their vaccine candidate is working by June, one official involved in the effort told “Meet the Press” Sunday. Sir John Bell, the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University, where one of the leading efforts to develop a vaccine is …

Bloomberg News reports:  The coronavirus pandemic is likely to last as long as two years and won’t be controlled until about two-thirds of the world’s population is immune, a group of experts said in a report. Because of its ability to spread from people who don’t appear to be ill, the virus may be harder to control than influenza, the …

The New York Post reports: The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said Tuesday that a new coronavirus vaccine could be tested as early as next week — with the potential for emergency use by fall, a report said Tuesday. “This is a crisis right now, and a solution is desperately needed by all,” Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla told the Wall Street …