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NASA Perseverance Mars rover to acquire first sample of Martian rock

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WASHINGTON: NASA is making final preparations for its Perseverance Mars rover to collect its first-ever sample of Martian rock, which future planned missions will transport to Earth. The six-wheeled geologist is searching for a scientifically interesting target in a part of Jezero Crater called the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough.”
This important mission milestone is expected to begin within the next two weeks. Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, and NASA kicked off the rover mission’s science phase on June 1, exploring a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) patch of crater floor that may contain Jezero’s deepest and most ancient layers of exposed bedrock.
“When Neil Armstrong took the first sample from the Sea of Tranquility 52 years ago, he began a process that would rewrite what humanity knew about the Moon,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters. “I have every expectation that Perseverance’s first sample from Jezero Crater, and those that come after, will do the same for Mars. We are on the threshold of a new era of planetary science and discovery.”
It took Armstrong 3 minutes and 35 seconds to collect that first Moon sample. Perseverance will require about 11 days to complete its first sampling, as it must receive its instructions from hundreds of millions of miles away while relying on the most complex and capable, as well as the cleanest, mechanism ever to be sent into space – the Sampling and Caching System.
Precision Instruments Working Together
The sampling sequence begins with the rover placing everything necessary for sampling within reach of its 7-foot (2-meter) long robotic arm. It will then perform an imagery survey, so NASA’s science team can determine the exact location for taking the first sample, and a separate target site in the same area for “proximity science.”
“The idea is to get valuable data on the rock we are about to sample by finding its geologic twin and performing detailed in-situ analysis,” said science campaign co-lead Vivian Sun, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “On the geologic double, first we use an abrading bit to scrape off the top layers of rock and dust to expose fresh, unweathered surfaces, blow it clean with our Gas Dust Removal Tool, and then get up close and personal with our turret-mounted proximity science instruments SHERLOC, PIXL, and WATSON.”
SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), and the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera will provide mineral and chemical analysis of the abraded target.
Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments, both located on the rover’s mast, will also participate. While SuperCam fires its laser at the abraded surface, spectroscopically measuring the resulting plume and collecting other data, Mastcam-Z will capture high-resolution imagery.
Working together, these five instruments will enable an unprecedented analysis of geological materials at the worksite.
“After our pre-coring science is complete, we will limit rover tasks for a sol, or a Martian day,” said Sun. “This will allow the rover to fully charge its battery for the events of the following day.”
Sampling day kicks off with the sample-handling arm within the Adaptive Caching Assembly retrieving a sample tube, heating it, and then inserting it into a coring bit. A device called the bit carousel transports the tube and bit to a rotary-percussive drill on Perseverance’s robotic arm, which will then drill the untouched geologic “twin” of the rock studied the previous sol, filling the tube with a core sample roughly the size of a piece of chalk.
Perseverance’s arm will then move the bit-and-tube combination back into bit carousel, which will transfer it back into the Adaptive Caching Assembly, where the sample will be measured for volume, photographed, hermetically sealed, and stored. The next time the sample tube contents are seen, they will be in a cleanroom facility on Earth, for analysis using scientific instruments much too large to send to Mars.
“Not every sample Perseverance is collecting will be done in the quest for ancient life, and we don’t expect this first sample to provide definitive proof one way or the other,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, of Caltech. “While the rocks located in this geologic unit are not great time capsules for organics, we believe they have been around since the formation of Jezero Crater and incredibly valuable to fill gaps in our geologic understanding of this region – things we’ll desperately need to know if we find life once existed on Mars.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is the first step in NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign. Subsequent NASA missions, now in development in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.



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DRDO successfully tests ‘fire & forget’ anti-tank missile | India News

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NEW DELHI: The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) on Wednesday successfully flight-tested an indigenously developed low-weight, fire-and-forget Man-Portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile (MPATGM). The missile is being seen as one which will give a major push to ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat‘, and strengthen the Indian Army.
“All mission objectives were met. The missile (MPATGM) has already been successfully flight-tested for the maximum range,” the DRDO said.
The research and development agency said that the missile is incorporated with state-of-the-art miniaturised infrared imaging seeker, along with advanced avionics.

The missile was launched from a man-portable launcher integrated with thermal site and the target was mimicking a tank, the DRDO also said, adding: “The missile hit the target in direct attack mode and destroyed it with precision. The test has validated the minimum range successfully.”
Watch DRDO successfully tests ‘fire and forget’ anti-tank missile



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‘Jurassic Pompeii’ yields thousands of ‘squiggly wiggly’ fossils

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The quantities involved are astonishing. Not hundreds, not thousands, but perhaps tens of thousands of these animals that scientists collectively call “the echinoderms”. It’s a great name, derived from the Greek for “hedgehog”, or “spiny”, “skin”. What is a sea urchin, if not an “underwater hedgehog”?



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Astronomers looking for ET find 9 appearing & disappearing ‘stars’

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Nine star-like objects that appeared and vanished within 30 minutes has an international team of astronomers excited as it continues to investigate the curious occurrence in the hope of finding sources of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI).
The international collaboration of astronomers from Sweden, Spain, the US, Ukraine, and India, including Alok C Gupta, from Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital, investigated an early form of photography that used glass plates to capture images of the night sky from April 12, 1950, exposed at Palomar Observatory in California and detected these transient stars which were not to be found in photographs half an hour later and not traced since then.
The astronomers track vanishing and appearing celestial objects by comparing old images of the night sky with new modern one, register unnatural phenomena, and probe deep into such phenomena to record changes in the Universe.
Such a group of objects appearing and disappearing at the same time have been detected for the first time in the history of astronomy. Gupta told TOI: “There has been no evidence for anything like this ever before and it has naturally piqued our interest.”
The findings have been published in Nature, and there’s no explanation in well-established astrophysical phenomena like gravitational lensing, fast radio bursts, or any variable star that could be responsible for this cluster of fast changes in the sky, which Gupta said is what makes the discovery more interesting.
He sid that the only thing they can say with certainty is that these images contain star-like objects that should not be there. In fact, the astronomers who belong to the collaboration Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) are now eager to look for more signatures of solar reflections in these digitized data from the 1950s in a hope to find ETI.
The study was led by Beatriz Villarroel of Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics, Stockholm, Sweden, and Spain’s Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and used the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias — the largest optical telescope around the world — at Canary Islands, Spain, to do deep second epoch observations.
As they continue to explore reasons behind the observation of these strange transient objects, the astronomers are examining the possibility that the photographic plates were contaminated with radioactive particles causing false stars on the plates.
“But if the observation is proven to be real, another option is solar reflections from reflective, unnatural objects in orbit around Earth several years before the first human satellite was launched,” a statement read, adding that the astronomers will also be looking for more signatures of solar reflections in these digitized data from the 1950s in a hope to find ETI.
TOI first reported about the VASCO group in February 2020 when it had proposed that “those parts of space where multiple stars seem to disappear could be the best places to look for ETI.” The team had then “proposed to search surveys for vanished stars in our Galaxy as probes of ‘impossible effects’ that could only be ascribed to an extraterrestrial technology.”



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Effect of common Covid-19 antibiotic found similar to that of placebo

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CALIFORNIA: The findings of a new study from UC San Francisco suggests that among non-hospitalized patients the antibiotic azithromycin was no more effective than a placebo in preventing symptoms of Covid-19. Despite widespread prescription of the antibiotic for the disease, it might increase the chance of hospitalization.
The study, which was conducted in collaboration with Stanford University, appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“These findings do not support the routine use of azithromycin for outpatient SARS-CoV-2 infection,” said lead author Catherine E. Oldenburg, ScD, MPH, an assistant professor with the UCSF Proctor Foundation. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes Covid-19.
Azithromycin, a broad-spectrum antibiotic, is widely prescribed as a treatment for Covid-19 in the United States and the rest of the world. “The hypothesis is that it has anti-inflammatory properties that may help prevent progression if treated early in the disease,” said Oldenburg. “We did not find this to be the case.”
The study included 263 participants who all tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 within seven days before entering the study. None were hospitalized at the time of enrollment. In a random selection process, 171 participants received a single, 1.2-gram oral dose of azithromycin and 92 received an identical placebo.
At day 14 of the study, 50 percent of the participants remained symptom-free in both groups. By day 21, five of the participants who received azithromycin had been hospitalized with severe symptoms of Covid-19 and none of the placebo group had been hospitalized.
The researchers concluded that treatment with a single dose of azithromycin compared to placebo did not result in greater likelihood of being symptom-free.
“Most of the trials done so far with azithromycin have focused on hospitalized patients with pretty severe disease,” said Oldenburg. “Our paper is one of the first placebo-controlled studies showing no role for azithromycin in outpatients.”



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Formula 1 boss Ross Brawn says hydrogen could be future fuel

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Hydrogen-powered cars could be the future of Formula 1, according to F1 managing director for motorsports Ross Brawn.

He says sustainability is now a central objective for the sport, which has committed to become carbon neutral by 2030.

The engineer behind Michael Schumacher’s seven world titles ruled out a switch to fully electric vehicles.

“Maybe hydrogen is the route that Formula 1 can have where we keep the noise, we keep the emotion but we move into a different solution,” Brawn told the BBC.

Rising F1 star Lando Norris is also sceptical about introducing fully electric cars to Formula 1. You just don’t get the same buzz from electric cars, he says.

The British driver, who came third in this month’s Austrian Grand Prix, worries going electric would take much of the atmosphere away from the sport.

“Something I love about Formula 1 and the race cars we drive is the sound and feeling you get from them,” he says. “That’s what makes it so cool and special and why the fans love it.”

Ambitious programme

Formula 1 has one of the most ambitious sustainability programmes of any major sport and in 2019 it announced its plan to go net zero by 2030 with targets including:

  • Net-zero impact from race cars
  • Ultra-efficient and low/zero-carbon logistics and travel
  • 100% renewably powered offices, facilities and factories
  • High-quality offsets and Co2 sequestration programmes

The sport has taken steps to reduce the number of people and freight that travels between race venues, by around a third, and has slimmed down its travelling media operation.

F1 has also significantly reduced the personnel involved in the media operation abroad. The media feeds from all races are now produced and broadcast from the sport’s HQ at Biggin Hill in Kent.

But Formula 1 has been criticised by environmentalists because so much of its effort depends on offsetting – funding activities that reduce emissions elsewhere to match the greenhouse gases the sport produces.

Brawn acknowledges that as the most prestigious motorsport tournament in the world, Formula 1 can play an important role shaping fans’ attitudes to sustainability and climate change.

But he says F1 has no plans to move away from hybrid motors which combine internal combustion and electric engines during this phase of the sport’s evolution.

“If you’re lecturing to an empty chamber you’re not getting any message across,” argues Brawn. “You have to engage the fans and the reason they come is they want to see great cars, great drivers doing battle.”

Many countries, including the UK, have set deadlines in the next two decades for phasing out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles but Formula 1 is making no such commitment.

“We have a one-and-a-half-hour race, we have 1,000 horsepower cars, we are the pinnacle of motorsport. You can’t get that bang without fossil fuels,” Brawn adds.

He points out that the high-tech turbo hybrid power units used to power Formula 1 cars since 2014 are among the most efficient ever designed in terms of the percentage of fuel energy that is converted into power – a measure known as thermal efficiency.

F1 engines have a thermal efficiency rating of about 50%, while road-car petrol engines are generally in the region of 30%.

For the moment the sport’s focus will be on developing synthetic fuels which use carbon captured from the air, farm waste or biomass.

Formula 1 rules already demand that the petrol used in F1 contains at least 10% biofuel and that proportion is likely to increase.

But environmentalists say because synthetic fuels and biofuels still produce carbon dioxide they continue to drive global warming and therefore cannot be a long-term solution.

In October Honda, which supplies engines to the Red Bull team whose driver Max Verstappen is currently leading the championship, announced it would be pulling out of F1 at the end of this year to concentrate its engineering focus on carbon-free technology.

Lewis Hamilton
F1 already uses part-biofuel

F1 can’t be a dinosaur

Replacing carbon-based fuels will be a huge challenge for Formula 1, Brawn acknowledges.

He says the sport will always be about speed and acceleration across 90-minute races and does not think that electric vehicles will be capable of delivering the performance it demands for decades, if ever.

“We don’t want [drivers] looking at power conservation modes and trying to make the battery last long enough to get to the end of the race or saving the battery up so in the last five laps, they can really go for it. That doesn’t seem to engage the fans.”

That is why, Brawn concludes, “there is no electric solution today”.

However, he recognises F1 faces growing pressure to raise its game on sustainability from drivers, F1 teams, the manufacturers and fans.

“We can’t have a sport which is seen as a dinosaur and out of step. We will always be mindful of that,” says Brawn.

He says the younger drivers are far more engaged in the topic than they would have been in the past.

British seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has spoken out on environmental issues, as has Germany’s four-time champion Sebastian Vettel.

Norris is impressed that established drivers like Hamilton and Vettel have used their platform to champion environmental and other causes.

“It is definitely something that over the coming years I’ll pay more and more attention to,” he says.

Zak Brown, chief executive of Norris’ McLaren team, confirmed there “are a lot of conversations going on right now in Formula 1” about sustainability but, like Brawn, he believes cars capable of 220mph or more are an essential part of the sport.

“We’ve always been a technology leader, whether that’s been in safety that’s come out of Formula 1 or carbon fibre materials to now how are we going to make our engines the most sustainable vehicles,” he tells the BBC.

McLaren made a commitment to go carbon neutral in 2011 and Brown says there is a lot of interest in the potential of hydrogen among Formula 1 teams.

“The challenge that we have is to make sure it is safe and can produce the amount of power that’s required to be able to do the lap times that we do, and hydrogen is very much on the table.”

Both men say they want to harness Formula 1’s proven ability to drive cutting-edge innovation to deliver sustainable solutions for the sport.

But they also point out that the emissions from the engines of the racing cars is a tiny fraction of the sport’s total emissions.

F1 estimates that 0.7% of the sport’s emissions are from the race cars themselves while almost half comes from the logistical caravan that moves equipment and personnel to the races, of which there are a record 23 planned this season.

But Brawn has categorically ruled out reducing the number of races to cut emissions.

He says bringing the races to countries around the world is part of what makes the championship great but he acknowledges there is also a financial imperative.

“At the end of the day, we’re a business,” says Brawn. “We have to generate income to make this whole thing work, and, obviously, the more races we have, the more profitable it is.”

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Perseid meteor shower 2021: All you need to know

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NEW DELHI: Perseids are fast, bright meteors and frequently leave long “wakes” of light and colour behind as they streak through the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Perseids peak during mid-August and are considered the best meteor shower of the year due to their high rates (50-100 meteors seen per hour) and pleasant late-summer temperatures.
The 2021 Perseid meteor shower is expected to produce the greatest number of meteors on the mornings of August 11, 12 and 13.
What are meteor showers?
Meteor showers are an icy comet’s leftovers that crash into Earth’s atmosphere. As comets travel through the solar system, they leave behind a dusty trail of rocks and ice that lingers in space long after they leave. When the Earth passes through these cascades of comet waste, the bits of debris – which can be as small as grains of sand – pierce the sky at such speeds that they burst, creating a celestial fireworks display. The Perseid meteor shower was first observed over 2,000 years ago.
Where do Perseids come from?
The Perseids get their name from the Perseus constellation from where they appear to emerge. However, they are the debris of the comet Swift-Tuttle, first discovered in 1862 by Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle. The comet last passed close to the Earth in 1992 and takes 133 years to rotate around the sun.
Every year between July 17 and August 24 the Earth crosses the orbital path of comet Swift-Tuttle, where the debris from the comet litters its orbit and the bits and pieces from this debris slam into the Earth’s upper atmosphere at some 130,000 miles (210,000 km) per hour, lighting up the night-time with fast-moving Perseid meteors.
How to watch the Perseid meteor shower 2021?
The 2021 Perseid meteor shower is expected to produce the greatest number of meteors on the mornings of August 11, 12 and 13 according to the American Meteor Society with no moonlight to ruin the show. No special equipment is required to watch the show and finding an open, dark sky is ideal for an unobstructed view. While they can be observed worldwide, the Perseids are best viewed in the northern hemisphere during pre-dawn hours.



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‘We should treat coronavirus like norovirus – not the flu’

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BRIGHTON: Because Covid symptoms – fever, cough, aches – are similar to flu symptoms, it is tempting to compare the two. Indeed, the UK’s new health secretary, Sajid Javid, recently said: “We are going to have to learn to accept the existence of Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu.”
But have we picked the wrong disease to compare Covid-19 with? Outside of a pandemic, we accept that seasonal flu is an infection anyone might catch. We vaccinate only those who are particularly prone to complications and treat people with severe side-effects, such as pneumonia. Otherwise, people are left to go about their business. Global deaths from flu-related illness typically amount to around 400,000 each year.
While we do need to find some way of living with Covid-19, the numbers suggest we’re still a long way from being able to treat it in the same way. There have been over 180 million cases around the world since early 2020, and at least 4 million people have died from the disease. On top of this, we’re not sure of the real effect of long Covid yet, but lasting symptoms are common, with one in ten people still experiencing illness 12 weeks after their infection. Currently, the health effect of Covid-19 across the population is much greater than flu.
We also know that Covid-19 is more infectious. We can be sure of this because, over the last 18 months, measures to control Covid-19 have reduced flu cases to almost none, but they obviously haven’t been as effective at stopping the coronavirus from spreading.
Cases were close to zero in the southern hemisphere during its winter in the middle of 2020 and again in Europe and North America between November 2020 and March 2021. Even in countries with high rates of Covid-19, such as South Africa and the UK, winter saw hardly any recorded cases of flu.
All of this suggests that using methods typically used to combat flu will have quite a different effect on Covid-19. Treating Covid-19 like flu will result in many more cases and deaths, and much more lingering illness, than seen in a typical influenza season.
Another comparison
Of course, SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes Covid-19 – does share some characteristics with influenza viruses, which makes comparisons tempting. Around 20% of people have no symptoms at all when infected with SARS-CoV-2, and many people infected with a flu virus also don’t get sick. Both viruses are prone to a lot of mutation. And with both diseases, older people and people with weakened immune systems are at a higher risk of severe illness than healthy young adults, with infections spreading rapidly in care homes, hospital wards and schools.
But a lot of these traits are also shared by another germ: the norovirus. It too can be asymptomatic in some people, and mutates rapidly – different strains of norovirus have been found circulating around the same hospital during one season. In fact, as it spreads around, norovirus sometimes changes so much that standard testing kits can’t recognise versions of it that have evolved.
Most people with symptomatic norovirus infections have diarrhoea, but some experience projectile vomiting as well. This creates an aerosol full of virus that spreads around any room and leaves it on surfaces, waiting for others to pick it up, as happens with respiratory viruses. Covid-19 also causes diarrhoea in some patients. Flu is not the only viral disease that Covid-19 can be compared to.
Equally, there are a lot of differences between SARS-CoV-2 and norovirus, so why labour the comparison? Well, as vaccines and other control measures get the virus under control, more and more parts of the world will join those others where lockdowns have been lifted, social distancing rules have been relaxed, and it’s safe to leave the house without wearing a mask. But we must still expect outbreaks of Covid-19 for years to come and must have plans to deal with them as they arise.
Knowing what we know about these viruses, these plans should consider controlling SARS-CoV-2 more like we would norovirus than flu. With norovirus, we keep people with the infection away from others. We ask parents whose children have symptoms to keep them off school. And in hospitals and care homes, patients with norovirus are nursed separately from others, staff use PPE for protection, and surfaces are deep cleaned. Handling Covid-19 in the future should be more interventionist like this. It should be more akin to living with norovirus than the flu.
In the meantime, we have developed some good hygiene habits during the pandemic, such as washing hands a bit more often and ventilating buildings better. Those who can wear a mask should think about keeping it up in enclosed spaces and on public transport. These simple measures should help to stop the spread of lots of viral diseases – whether against influenza, norovirus or Covid-19 – before bigger interventions are needed.
By Sarah Pitt, University of Brighton
Content courtesy: The Conversation



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Covid-19: Countries using China, Astra shots increasingly eye boosters

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DUBAI: Growing concern that Covid-19 vaccines being deployed across much of the developing world aren’t capable of thwarting the delta variant is prompting some countries to look at offering third doses to bolster immunity against more-infectious virus strains.
Though definitive evidence is yet to emerge backing the need for so-called “booster” shots, health officials from Thailand to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have already decided to offer the extra doses to some people already inoculated with vaccines from Chinese makers Sinovac Biotech Ltd, Sinopharm and from AstraZeneca.
Officials are being motivated by concerns that delta and other variants appear to be breaking down defenses of vaccines not made from the super-effective messenger RNA technology, or mRNA. In places like Mongolia and the UAE, high levels of coverage with Chinese shots using the older, less effective inactivated vaccine platform hasn’t stopped a surge in cases. In the Seychelles, five people fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca’s shot have died.
Research shows that the delta mutation is powerful enough to make even mRNA shots from BioNTech SE and Moderna Inc less effective, bringing down protection to below 90%. The effectiveness of AstraZeneca’s viral vector vaccine against symptomatic infections caused by the variant was lower at 60%, a study showed, though it can still prevent more than 90% of hospitalizations.
Countries are hoping a booster — either mRNA or a dose of another shot previously taken — could bolster protection ahead of the return of colder weather that’s optimal for the virus’s spread. Unlike western developers, Sinovac and Sinopharm have shared little about how their vaccines could protect against variants. Shao Yiming, a researcher with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in May that preliminary studies indicated Chinese vaccines were still protective against variants emerging from India, without elaborating.
The two inactivated vaccines produced by Sinopharm were 73% and 78% effective against symptomatic Covid in phase III trials. Various results from Sinovac’s clinical trials across Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey put efficacy at a wide range of 50% to over 80%, which has fueled uncertainty about how well it works.
“We recognize that the weaker vaccines in particular seem to lose their ability to protect against Covid-19 relatively quickly, particularly against the variant strains,” said Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Australia’s Flinders University. “Even the better vaccines seem to be showing increasing levels of vaccine failure due to variant infections.”
Yet any plans by wealthier nations to acquire additional shots stands to further strain global supply and exacerbate the inequality gap that has left poor countries with fewer inoculations. The World Health Organization has called on richer countries to share doses to help meet a goal of vaccinating at least 40% of every country’s population by the end of the year. Global deaths passed 4 million this week, as the disparity leaves poorer places exposed to outbreaks.
Giving extra doses “could easily divert one to two billion doses of vaccines over the coming 12 months to boost people already immunized that might otherwise go to developing countries where people have yet to receive their first immunization,” Petrovsky said.
Pfizer Inc CEO Albert Bourla tweeted Thursday that the company believes a booster dose “will likely be necessary to maintain highest levels of protection” against Covid, with initial data from its booster study demonstrating that the added dose was eliciting five-to-10 fold higher antibody response. The drugmaker plans to request US emergency authorization in August for a third booster dose of its shot, based on early data showing it can increase immune protection from Covid.
Great unknown
The US Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration said in a joint statement Thursday that people who are fully vaccinated don’t need a booster shot at this time, adding that they were engaged in a science-based process to consider whether or when such doses might be necessary.
The WHO has expressed caution in encouraging third doses. Chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said in June that such a recommendation was unnecessary and premature given the paucity of data on booster shots and the fact that high-risk individuals in much of the world still haven’t been fully vaccinated.
But governments are racing ahead as the delta variant spreads to more than 100 countries after devastating India, where it was first identified. The concern is particularly acute in places which had earlier relied on Chinese vaccines, which are available in nearly 100 nations.
In the Middle East, some countries have already started offering booster shots — including Pfizer and Sinopharm — for people who completed their vaccinations months ago, mostly with Sinopharm.
Thailand plans to use vaccines from AstraZeneca and Pfizer as boosters for healthcare workers who earlier received Sinovac shots. The Indonesian Doctors Association this week also called for booster shots for health workers, after some medical staffers died despite being fully inoculated with Sinovac and AstraZeneca.
In Singapore — which has indicated that it’s preparing to ensure booster shots can be administered as early as year-end should they be needed — people inoculated with Sinovac aren’t being counted in the official vaccine tally, amid efficacy concerns and risk of vaccine breakthrough.
Preliminary studies from Thailand show that a first dose of Sinovac followed by an AstraZeneca shot three to four weeks later can elicit a stronger immune response than two doses of the Sinovac vaccine.
Even China, which has fully immunized more than a third of its 1.4 billion people with homegrown vaccines, has a study underway to evaluate the benefit of booster shots. Sinovac CEO Yin Weidong has said a third shot of the company’s vaccine, given three to six months after full inoculation, could raise antibody levels by as much as 20 times.
China is currently reviewing the BioNTech vaccine for approval. A few options are being considered by officials, including using it a booster shot for people already fully inoculated with local vaccines, according to people familiar with the matter, asking not to be named as the talks are not public. No decision has been made, and adding the mRNA shot as another option in China’s general rollout is also being discussed, the people said.
“If you can explore different combinations, there frequently is a combination where you get a better outcome than just using the same vaccine twice in a row,” said Shane Crotty, a professor at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at California’s La Jolla Institute for Immunology. “I do think that’ll happen for Covid vaccines.”



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New post-infection treatment for Covid-19 identified

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WASHINGTON: Scientists have identified a post-infection treatment for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, and successfully demonstrated its efficacy in stopping viral reproduction in mice.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that animal models infected with SARS-CoV-2 and treated with an inhibitor of protease enzymes had significantly increased survival and decreased lung viral quantity.
These protease inhibitors are a class of antiviral drugs that prevent viral reproduction by selectively binding to viral enzymes and blocking the activation of proteins that are necessary for the production of infectious viral particles.
“We developed the protease inhibitor GC376 for treating a fatal coronavirus infection in cats, which is now under commercial development as an investigational new animal drug,” said Yunjeong Kim, associate professor at Kansas State University in the US.
“After Covid-19 emerged, many research groups reported that this inhibitor is also effective against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, and many are currently pursuing the development of protease inhibitors as a treatment,” Kim said.
The research team modified GC376 using a tool called deuteration to test its efficacy against SARS-CoV-2.
Treatment with a deuterated variant starting at 24 hours post-infection resulted in significantly increased survival of mice compared to untreated mice, the researchers said.
The results suggest that deuterated variants have excellent potential as antiviral agents against SARS-CoV-2, they said.
“Treating SARS-CoV-2-infected mice with deuterated GC376 significantly improved survival, viral replication in lungs and weight losses, which shows the efficacy of the antiviral compound,” said Kyeong-Ok Chang, professor at Kansas State University.
“The results suggest deuterated GC376 has a potential for further development, and this deuteration method can be utilised to other antiviral compounds to generate potent inhibitors,” Chang said.
The virologists are continuing to develop improved inhibitors using various methods. Deuterated GC376 is currently being evaluated for further potential development.



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