Intensive care specialists are like the canaries in a coalmine. They’re often the first to spot something that’s new and worrying; and it was around Christmas time last year that I remember first hearing about doctors in Wuhan, China seeing some unusual symptoms that concerned them in their patients who needed mechanical ventilation. By January […]

I work at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID) in the Department of Medicine. We have stayed operational throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. I was impressed by the way CITIID came together, speeding up completion of our containment level 3 labs (designed to safely handle infectious diseases) by four to six months. This […]

The COV002 trial, developed by the University of Oxford, aims to assess how well people across a broad range of ages could be protected from COVID-19 using a new vaccine called ChAdOx1 nCoV-19. It will also provide valuable information on safety of the vaccine and its ability to generate good immune responses against the virus. […]

The first analysis of a new point-of-care ‘nucleic acid test’ for SARS-CoV-2 in a UK hospital setting shows these machines dramatically reduce time spent on COVID-19 ‘holding’ wards – allowing patients to be treated or discharged far quicker than with current lab testing set-ups. The rapid diagnostic capability of SAMBA II devices – an average of […]

A new trial to prevent organ failure and death in COVID-19 patients has been launched, led by clinicians and scientists in Cambridge and London. TACTIC, as the trial is known, will test whether re-purposing existing drugs, which target the body’s own immune response, can prevent people suffering severe organ failure or death. The trial is […]

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, have clinically validated and tested the AI on large sets of CT scans and found that it was successfully able to detect, segment, quantify and differentiate different types of brain lesions. Their results, reported in The Lancet Digital Health, could be useful in large-scale […]

The new Fellows have been chosen for their exceptional contributions to advancing biomedical science via world-leading research discoveries, running national science communication and engagement programmes and translating scientific advances into benefits for patients and the public. The value of medical science has never been more apparent than during the current coronavirus global health crisis. From […]

Since the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in late 2019, more than 3.5 million people are known to have been infected, leading to over 240,000 deaths worldwide from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The race is on to find new drugs to treat COVID-19 patients and to develop a vaccine to prevent […]

The COVID-19 Sounds App is now available as a web app for Chrome and Firefox browsers. Versions for Android and iOS will be available soon. As COVID-19 is a respiratory condition, the sounds made by people with the condition – including voice, breathing and cough sounds – are very specific. A large, crowdsourced data set […]

The SAMBA II machines, developed by Diagnostics for the Real World, provide a simple and accurate system for the diagnosis of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. They will be used by healthcare workers at point-of-care in order to rapidly diagnose patients, directing those who test positive for the infection to dedicated […]