Category: Medicine
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Hospitals without walls: the future of healthcare
ST Mary’s hospital was slated for a £1bn redevelopment before the pandemic struck, with work due to start in 2027. The main emergency and specialist hospital serving north-west London will still get its upgrade, but it might look quite different now. “Covid-19 has dramatically changed things,” says James Kinross, a surgeon who works at St…
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Our definition of health security needs an overhaul
IN October 2019, in those halcyon pre-Covid-19 days, a chart was published that ranked 195 countries according to their capacity to deal with outbreaks of infectious disease. Drawn up by the Washington DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, Maryland, the 2019 Global Health Security Index (GHSI) placed…
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The great opportunity: how Covid transformed global crime
BY the end of March, one week into the UK’s first lockdown, recorded crime in Lancashire had dropped by a startling 40% compared with the four-year average. “At first there was some mild panic,” says DCI Eric Halford, of Lancashire Constabulary. “Most senior officers expected a surge in demand…” This article first appeared in The Guardian on…
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Update on KK Shailaja and her ‘Covid brigade’
BY mid-May, the Indian state of Kerala had contained the first wave of Covid-19, earning praise for the quick thinking and joined-up response of its health minister, KK Shailaja, and her team. By July, however, there were suggestions that those plaudits had been premature, and that Kerala’s Covid-19 response had come unstuck. Had it…? This…
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Time for some home truths about deforestation
TO prevent future pandemics, we must stop deforestation and end the illegal wildlife trade. Do you agree? Of course you do, because what’s not to like? The buck stops with the evil other. The question is, will doing those things solve the problem? And the answer is, probably not. They will help, but there’s another,…
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Coronaviruses on the wing
BATS in the frontier regions of south and south-west China harbour other coronaviruses that already have the capacity to cross over to humans, a prominent Chinese scientist has said… This article was first published in The Guardian on 4 December 2020. To continue reading, click here.
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On the under-explored promise of the immune response in your nose
WHILE everyone celebrated this month’s news that not one but two experimental vaccines against Covid-19 have proved at least 90% effective at preventing disease in late-stage clinical trials, research into understanding how the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, interacts with the human immune system never paused… This story first appeared in The Observer on 22 October…
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Arms and the virus
LETTING the virus that causes Covid-19 circulate more-or-less freely is dangerous not only because it risks overwhelming hospitals and so endangering lives unnecessarily, but also because it could delay the evolution of the virus to a more benign form and potentially even make it more lethal… This article first appeared in The Guardian on 19 November…
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On pathogen evolution
A DEEPLY entrenched idea, that newly emerged agents of disease inevitably evolve to become more benign over time, is scientifically unfounded, according to new research… This story was first published in The Guardian on 19 November 2020. To continue reading, click here.
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Magh mela 2021 will go ahead despite the pandemic
THE Magh Mela, the annual Hindu pilgrimage to Prayagraj, India, usually attracts around 10 million people. Officials announced last month that it will go ahead as planned this winter—despite the country’s high number of new COVID-19 cases… This article first appeared in National Geographic on 12 November 2020. To continue reading, click here.