More than one in 10 cases of coronary heart disease could be prevented if people reduced their TV viewing to less than an hour a day, research suggests. From a report: Coronary heart disease occurs when fatty material builds up inside the coronary arteries causing them to narrow, reducing the heart's blood supply. Researchers say cutting down on time spent in front of the TV could lower the risk of developing the disease. "Reducing time spent watching TV should be recognised as a key behavioural target for prevention of coronary heart disease, irrespective of genetic susceptibility and traditional risk markers," said Dr Youngwon Kim, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong and an author of the research.

While the team did not look at what was behind the association, Kim said previous studies had found excessive TV viewing time is associated with adverse levels of cholesterol and glucose in the body. "Unfavourable levels of these cardiometabolic risk markers may then lead to increased risk of developing coronary heart disease," he said. Writing in the journal BMC Medicine, Kim and colleagues report how they used data from 373,026 white British people aged 40-69 who were part of an endeavour known as the UK Biobank study.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Researchers in China revealed they have developed a contact lens that can sense an increase in pressure within the eye and release an anti-glaucoma drug should the pressure exceed a certain level. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the team describe how they created the device using an upper and lower lens, with a snowflake-shaped pressure sensor and wireless power transfer device sandwiched between them around the rim of the lenses. The arrangement appears to give the effect of the wearer having golden irises. However, the team say the design allows the necessary components to be included in the device without blocking the wearer's view or irritating the eye.

When the pressure inside the eye increases, the gap between the upper and lower lenses decreases. This is detected by the pressure sensor by means of a cantilever. The sensor then sends a signal to the wireless system which subsequently triggers the release of an anti-glaucoma drug, from a hydrogel attached to an electrode, and enables it to cross the cornea of the eye. The drug, brimonidine, acts to reduce the pressure within the eye. The study reveals that the contact lenses have so far been tested on pigs' eyes and on the eyes of living rabbits -- albeit with smaller-sized lenses -- although trials have yet to be carried out in humans. The researchers note the lenses are not only soft and minimally invasive but are also battery-free, adding that the approach could be expanded to help tackle other eye diseases. "We can now imagine that a glaucoma sufferer wearing these contact lenses will not only receive real-time information about the pressures within the eye, since the contact lens has built-in wireless capacity and can easily communicate with an app on your smartphone, but also receive, for example, pressure-relieving drugs when needed," said Prof Zubair Ahmed from the Institute of Inflammation and Aging at the University of Birmingham. "The materials required to create such contact lenses are inexpensive and soon could be mass-produced," he added.

After scandals in which doctors let unsupervised assistants operate on patients, South Korea is becoming one of the first to require cameras in operating rooms. The New York Times reports: Ethicists and medical officials, including those at the American College of Surgeons, have cautioned that surveilling surgeons to deter malpractice may undermine trust in doctors, hurt morale, violate patient privacy and discourage physicians from taking risks to save lives. The Korea Medical Association, which is opposed to the new mandate, has lobbied to limit its impact. But supporters of the law said the move would help protect patients, build the public's trust in doctors and provide victims of medical malpractice with evidence to use in court.

"People are dying in operating rooms," said An Gi-jong, an advocate for patients. "We can't rely on doctors to solve problems on their own anymore." About five patients have died from ghost surgeries in the past eight years, he said. They include Kwon Dae-hee, a college student in Seoul who died of a hemorrhage in 2016 after jawline surgery. His mother, Lee Na-geum, who obtained footage of his operation and reviewed it hundreds of times, found evidence that the operation had been botched because parts of it had been conducted by an unsupervised nursing assistant. Ms. Lee, 62, who has held a public vigil denouncing ghost surgeries since her son's death, said in an interview: "Once the cameras are installed, your lies will be exposed if you're a ghost doctor. Cameras reveal truth." [...]

Under the new law, hospitals performing surgeries on unconscious patients must install video cameras in their operating rooms. If a patient or a relative requests that a surgery be filmed, the hospital must comply. Doctors can refuse for certain reasons, such as if a delay in the operation would put the patient's life at risk, or if the filming would significantly impede residents' training. The recorded footage can be viewed for criminal investigations, prosecutions, trials, medical disputes or mediation.

Biopharmaceutical company MindMed has announced the first topline data from a novel Phase 2 trial testing high doses of LSD as a treatment for anxiety. The results indicate one to two LSD sessions can generate rapid and sustained reductions to anxiety, however, significantly larger trials will be needed to validate these findings. New Atlas reports: This new trial was conducted at University Hospital Basel in Switzerland. The trial was randomized, and placebo-controlled with a crossover design enrolling 46 participants. The participants completed two high-dose (200-microgram) LSD sessions, six weeks apart. The primary endpoint was a reduction in anxiety 16 weeks after the second LSD session, as measured on a scale called STAI (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), a common test used to quantify anxiety.

The data revealed by MindMed indicates 65 percent (13 out of 20) patients in the LSD group demonstrated a clinically significant reduction in STAI scores of more than 30 percent. Only nine percent of the placebo group (two out of 22) showed similar clinical improvements. The results indicate the treatment was generally safe with only mild adverse effects reported by most subjects. The announcement did report one serious adverse treatment event during an LSD session described as "acute transient anxiety and delusions." This subject required sedatives but no long-term adverse effects were noted. [...] MindMed is now beginning a Phase 2b trial to expand on these findings and further explore LSD as a treatment for anxiety disorders.

Using anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids to relieve pain could increase the chances of developing chronic pain, according to researchers from McGill University and colleagues in Italy. Neuroscience News reports: Their research puts into question conventional practices used to alleviate pain. Normal recovery from a painful injury involves inflammation and blocking that inflammation with drugs could lead to harder-to-treat pain. [...] In the study published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers examined the mechanisms of pain in both humans and mice. They found that neutrophils -- a type of white blood cell that helps the body fight infection -- play a key role in resolving pain. Experimentally blocking neutrophils in mice prolonged the pain up to ten times the normal duration. Treating the pain with anti-inflammatory drugs and steroids like dexamethasone and diclofenac also produced the same result, although they were effective against pain early on.

These findings are also supported by a separate analysis of 500,000 people in the United Kingdom that showed that those taking anti-inflammatory drugs to treat their pain were more likely to have pain two to ten years later, an effect not seen in people taking acetaminophen or anti-depressants. "Our findings suggest it may be time to reconsider the way we treat acute pain. Luckily pain can be killed in other ways that don't involve interfering with inflammation," says Massimo Allegri, a Physician at the Policlinico of Monza Hospital in Italy and Ensemble Hospitalier de la Cote in Switzerland.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists are developing magnetically guided microscopic projectiles that can be injected into patients' blood to attack breast, prostate and other tumors. The project -- led by researchers at Sheffield University -- builds on progress in two key medical fields. The first involves viruses that specifically attack tumors. The second focuses on soil bacteria that manufacture magnets which they use to align themselves in the Earth's magnetic field.

The anti-cancer viruses that are being exploited by the Sheffield group -- who have been funded by Cancer Research UK -- are known as oncolytic viruses. They occur naturally but can also be modified to improve their efficacy and to limit the chances of them infecting healthy cells. [...] "The problem is that oncolytic viruses attract the attention of the body's immune defenses and only skin-deep tumors can be tackled this way before the viruses are blocked fairly quickly by our cell defenses," said Dr Faith Howard, another project leader. A solution, the scientists say, is to coat the viruses in magnetic particles. Injected into the blood, these microscopic projectiles could then be directed quickly to a tumor -- by using magnets placed over a patient's body -- before their progress can be blocked by immune defenses.

An oncolytic virus had a diameter of about 180 nanometers while the magnets needed to be about 50 nanometers in size, added Howard. (A nanometre is a billionth of a meter.) "These tiny magnets could be made in the laboratory but we have found bacteria do a better job of manufacturing them than we could," she added. Some species of soil bacteria synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles that are called magnetosomes. These are used as compasses that allow the microbes to navigate in Earth's magnetic field and help them find optimum conditions for their growth and survival. "These microscopic magnets they make are perfectly shaped and ideally suited to the microscopic packages we need to target deep cancers," Howard said.

To attack tumors, the Guardian reports, "scientists are developing magnetically guided microscopic projectiles that can be injected into patients' blood." The project — led by researchers at Sheffield University — builds on progress in two key medical fields. The first involves viruses that specifically attack tumours.... After infection with an oncolytic virus, a cancer cell will burst open and die. The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved the use of T-Vec, a modified herpes simplex virus that infects and kills tumour cells and is now being used to treat people with certain types of melanoma, a skin cancer.
Unfortunately, the viruses soon get attacked by the body's immune system. So the scientists want to coat the viruses with magnetic particles, so that magnets (outside a patient's body) can quickly guide those viruses where they're needed.

And to accomplish this they're using a soil bacteria which is known to make magnets to align with Earth's own magnetic field. "The essence of this approach is straightforward," one of the project's leaders explains to the Guardian. "We are using bugs as drugs.... we have found bacteria do a better job of manufacturing them than we could." Having developed the technology, the Sheffield team is now working to ensure they can manufacture sufficient supplies so that clinical trials on humans can begin soon. To date, trials have focused on animal models. "These early tests have been very encouraging and we now need to take the next steps to bring this technique to a state where it can be administered to humans — hopefully in a few years' time."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Falconhell for sharing the article!

This week the Washington Post described Russia as "struggling under an unprecedented hacking wave" — with one survey finding Russia is now the world's leader for leaked sensitive data (such as passwords and email addresses). "Federation government: your lack of honor and blatant war crimes have earned you a special prize..." read a message left behind on one of the breached networks...

Documents were stolen from Russia's media regulator and 20 years of email from one of Russia's government-owned TV/radio broadcasting companies. Ukraine's government is even suggesting targets through its "IT Army" channel on telegram, and has apparently distributed the names of hundreds of Russia's own FSB security agents. And meanwhile, the Post adds, "Ordinary criminals with no ideological stake in the conflict have also gotten in on the act, taking advantage of preoccupied security teams to grab money as the aura of invincibility falls, researchers said." Soon after the invasion, one of the most ferocious ransomware gangs, Conti, declared that it would rally to protect Russian interests in cyberspace. The pledge backfired in a spectacular fashion, since like many Russian-speaking crime groups it had affiliates in Ukraine. One of them then posted more than 100,000 internal gang chats, and later the source code for its core program, making it easier for security software to detect and block attacks.

Network Battalion 65 [a small hacktivist group formed as the war began looking inevitable] went further. It modified the leaked version of the Conti code to evade the new detections, improved the encryption and then used it to lock up files inside government-connected Russian companies. "We decided it would be best to give Russia a taste of its own medicine. Conti caused (and still causes) a lot of heartache and pain for companies all around the world," the group said. "As soon as Russia ends this stupidity in Ukraine, we will stop our attacks completely."

In the meantime, Network Battalion 65 has asked for ransomware payments even as it has shamed victims on Twitter for having poor security. The group said it hasn't gotten any money yet but would donate anything it collects to Ukraine.
Ars Technica quotes a cybersecurity researcher who now says "there are tens of terabytes of data that's just falling out of the sky."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SpzToid for sharing the article!

According to the World Health Organization, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the deaths of nearly 15 million people around the world. "That is 13% more deaths than normally expected over two years," notes the BBC. From the report: The WHO believes many countries undercounted the numbers who died from Covid -- only 5.4 million were reported. In India, there were 4.7 million Covid deaths, it says - 10 times the official figures -- and almost a third of Covid deaths globally. The Indian government has questioned the estimate, saying it has "concerns" about the methodology, but other studies have come to similar conclusions about the scale of deaths in the country.

The measure used by the WHO is called excess deaths - how many more people died than would normally be expected based on mortality in the same area before the pandemic hit. These calculations also take into account deaths which were not directly because of Covid but instead caused by its knock-on effects, like people being unable to access hospitals for the care they needed. It also accounts for poor record-keeping in some regions, and sparse testing at the start of the crisis. But the WHO said the majority of the extra 9.5 million deaths seen above the 5.4 million Covid deaths reported were thought to be direct deaths caused by the virus, rather than indirect deaths. Yesterday, the United States officially surpassed 1 million COVID-19 deaths -- "a once unthinkable scale of loss even for the country with the world's highest recorded toll from the virus," says NBC News.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: The pig heart transplanted into an American patient earlier this year in a landmark operation carried a porcine virus that may have derailed the experiment and contributed to his death two months later, say transplant specialists. [...] In a statement released by the university in March, a spokesperson said there was "no obvious cause identified at the time of his death" and that a full report was pending. Now MIT Technology Review has learned that Bennett's heart was affected by porcine cytomegalovirus, a preventable infection that is linked to devastating effects on transplants.

The presence of the pig virus and the desperate efforts to defeat it were described by Griffith during a webinar streamed online by the American Society of Transplantation on April 20. The issue is now a subject of wide discussion among specialists, who think the infection was a potential contributor to Bennett's death and a possible reason why the heart did not last longer. The heart swap in Maryland was a major test of xenotransplantation, the process of moving tissues between species. But because the special pigs raised to provide organs are supposed to be virus-free, it now appears that the experiment was compromised by an unforced error. The biotechnology company that raised and engineered the pigs, Revivicor, declined to comment and has made no public statement about the virus. "It was surprising. That pig is supposed to be clean of all pig pathogens, and this is a significant one," says Mike Curtis, CEO of eGenesis, a competing company that is also breeding pigs for transplant organs. "Without the virus, would Mr. Bennett have lived? We don't know, but the infection didn't help. It likely contributed to the failure."

NBC News is reporting that the United States has officially surpassed 1 million COVID-19 deaths -- "a once unthinkable scale of loss even for the country with the world's highest recorded toll from the virus." From the report: The number -- equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the U.S. -- was reached at stunning speed: 27 months after the country confirmed its first case of the virus. While deaths from Covid have slowed in recent weeks, about 360 people have still been dying every day. The casualty count is far higher than what most people could have imagined in the early days of the pandemic [...].

Now, more than two years and 999,999 fatalities later, the U.S. death toll is the world's highest total by a significant margin, figures show. In a distant second is Brazil, which has recorded just over 660,000 confirmed Covid deaths.

Researchers at the Terasaki Institute have now shown that silk scaffolds loaded with stem cells can help tendons regenerate more effectively. New Atlas reports: For the new study, the Terasaki researchers developed their own scaffold that could support the tendon while it healed. This scaffold was made of silk fibroin paired with a hydrogel known as GelMA -- the former gave the scaffold strength and stretchability, while the latter is biocompatible and encourages cells to attach and grow. After experimenting to get the right ratios of ingredients, the team fabricated nanofiber sheets of their silk fibroin and GelMA (SG) material. Then the sheets are seeded with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which can not only differentiate into several cell types, but also aid regeneration by producing signaling molecules that summon immune cells to the area and encourage new blood vessels to form.

The team tested these stem-cell-loaded SG sheets in rats with injuries to their Achilles tendons. Compared to other scaffolds loaded with stem cells, those made of SG healed the tendons the fastest, while also forming densely packed tendon fibers, reducing injury sites, and remodeling the muscle components. "The synergistic effects of GelMA's capacity for supporting regenerative tissue formation and the structural advantages of silk fibroin make our composite material well suited for tendon repair," said HanJun Kim, lead researcher on the study. The team hopes that with further work, the stem-cell-loaded scaffolds could eventually lead to new therapies for tendon injuries. The research has been published in the journal Small.

Efforts to tease apart the vast swarm of proteins in venom -- a field called venomics -- have burgeoned in recent years, leading to important drug discoveries. From a report: In a small room in a building at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the invertebrate keeper, Emma Califf, lifts up a rock in a plastic box. "This is one of our desert hairies," she said, exposing a three-inch-long scorpion, its tail arced over its back. "The largest scorpion in North America." This captive hairy, along with a swarm of inch-long bark scorpions in another box, and two dozen rattlesnakes of varying species and sub- species across the hall, are kept here for the coin of the realm: their venom. Efforts to tease apart the vast swarm of proteins in venom -- a field called venomics -- have burgeoned in recent years, and the growing catalog of compounds has led to a number of drug discoveries. As the components of these natural toxins continue to be assayed by evolving technologies, the number of promising molecules is also growing.

"A century ago we thought venom had three or four components, and now we know just one type of venom can have thousands," said Leslie V. Boyer, a professor emeritus of pathology at the University of Arizona. "Things are accelerating because a small number of very good laboratories have been pumping out information that everyone else can now use to make discoveries." She added, "There's a pharmacopoeia out there waiting to be explored." It is a striking case of modern-day scientific alchemy: The most highly evolved of natural poisons on the planet are creating a number of effective medicines with the potential for many more.

One of the most promising venom-derived drugs to date comes from the deadly Fraser Island funnel web spider of Australia, which halts cell death after a heart attack. Blood flow to the heart is reduced after a heart attack, which makes the cell environment more acidic and leads to cell death. The drug, a protein called Hi1A, is scheduled for clinical trials next year. In the lab, it was tested on the cells of beating human hearts. It was found to block their ability to sense acid, "so the death message is blocked, cell death is reduced, and we see improved heart cell survival," said Nathan Palpant, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia who helped make the discovery.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Is polio making a comeback? The world has spent billions of dollars over the last 15 years in an effort to wipe out the virus through vaccination efforts -- with encouraging results. Rates plunged from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to just several dozen by 2016. But in recent years, polio incidence has started to inch back up. The reason has to do with the type of vaccine used in many parts of the world, primarily in low- and middle-income countries. While the United States and other Western countries inject an inactivated virus that poses no risk of spread and are now polio-free, other countries rely on an oral vaccine. It's cheap, it's easy to administer and two or more doses confer lifelong immunity. But it's made with living, weakened virus. And that poses a problem.

Those who've been immunized with live virus can shed it in their stool, which can then spread through sewage in places with poor sanitation. If the virus stays weak, it can even expose the unvaccinated to polio and give them immunity. But if it mutates and regains virulence, someone who isn't vaccinated can become sick with vaccine-derived polio after contact with the contaminated wastewater. And now countries that had previously eradicated polio in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia are seeing new outbreaks of vaccine-derived polio.

One reason for this rise in cases, say polio experts, is that gaps in immunization in recent years have created more opportunities for the unvaccinated to become infected. "Vaccination campaigns have been certainly affected by the pandemic," says Raul Andino, a virologist at University of California, San Francisco. [...] The composition of the oral vaccine has also been a factor. In 2016, eyeing an uptick in vaccine-derived polio, global health officials altered the composition of the oral vaccine. Previously, the vaccine protected against all three types of wild polio -- the virus that circulates naturally in the environment. Then they withdrew one of those types -- the one that was leading to most of the vaccine-derived cases but whose wild form had been successfully eradicated. Only there was a development that hadn't been anticipated. Vaccine-derived poliovirus of that type was still in circulation from earlier iterations of the oral vaccine -- and now with the reformulated vaccine, increasing numbers of people who were no longer vaccinated against it. So there was further spread. Thankfully, a new kind of vaccine being rolled out is showing promise. "The novel vaccine still contains a weakened version of the virus, but it's been hobbled even further," reports NPR.

"The researchers tweaked the virus so that it has to accumulate more mutations to become virulent and has a harder time amassing those mutations. For example, they've altered the polymerase, one of the key enzymes responsible for introducing mutations, reducing its ability to mix and match genes from different viruses."

The common perception that nearly everyone in America seemed to have acquired the Omicron variant last winter may not have been far from the truth. By February 2022, nearly 60 percent of the population had been infected with the coronavirus, almost double the proportion seen in December 2021, according to data released on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The New York Times reports: "By February 2022, evidence of previous Covid-19 infections substantially increased among every age group," Dr. Kristie Clarke, the agency researcher who led the study, said at a news briefing. Infections rose most sharply during the Omicron surge among children and adolescents, perhaps because many people in those age groups were still unvaccinated. The increase was smallest among adults 65 or older, who have the highest rate of vaccination and may be the most likely to take precautions. The new research suggests that three out of four children and adolescents in the United States had been infected with the coronavirus by February 2022, compared with one-third of older adults.

While some studies suggest that prior infection offers a weaker shield against the virus than vaccines do, the resulting antibodies should provide a reasonable degree of protection against severe illness, at least in the short term. "We still do not know how long infection-induced immunity will last," Dr. Clarke said. The gains in population-wide immunity may explain why the new surge that is roaring through China and many countries in Europe has been muted in the United States so far. The findings may offer some comfort to parents who have been waiting anxiously for a vaccine to be approved for the youngest children. Many of those children now seem to have acquired at least some immunity. Even so, Dr. Clarke urged parents to immunize children who qualify as soon as regulators approve a vaccine for them, regardless of any prior infection.

A group of TikTok- and Instagram-famous physicians say they have a solution for the "red tape" of the current medical system: NFTs of cartoon doctors. From a report: These NFTs, called MetaDocs, are supposed to give buyers access to real doctors, almost like a Web3 telehealth subscription. When MetaDocs launched in December, it claimed that its legion of celebrity doctors, who have a collective social media following of 70 million and have included "Dr. Pimple Popper" Sandra Lee and plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Brown of TikTok fame, would all be available via DM, group "ask me anything" sessions, or one-on-one video chats to those who buy in. MetaDocs founder Dr. Sina Joorabchi hopes it will evolve into a full-fledged virtual clinic in the so-called metaverse, where patients can put on a haptic suit and be examined remotely by a physician in virtual reality.

But now, MetaDocs is facing backlash from the medical community, in part because it is not actually licensed as a telemedicine service and thus its doctors cannot legally make diagnoses, write prescriptions, or give personalized medical advice to anyone who buys a MetaDocs NFT. A further wrinkle: Doctors are almost always required to be licensed in a state in order to practice there, including through telehealth services. "At this point, we're hesitant to refer to anybody as a patient," Dr. Dustin Portela, a MetaDocs physician and practicing dermatologist, told BuzzFeed News. According to a recent white paper, the presale cost of a MetaDocs NFT will be 0.2 ETH, or about $570, though the company hasn't determined an exact price yet. But why would someone pay hundreds of dollars for a cartoon so they could "ask a doctor anything" if they are not seeking some form of medical advice?

Bill Gates shares a statistic about the COVID-19 pandemic. "If we'd been able to stop it within 100 days, we would've saved over 98% of the lives." "Viruses spread exponentially, and so if you get in there when the infection rate is fairly small, you can actually stop the spread."
In a new TED talk, Gates argues that we did learn a lot from this pandemic — enough to build a prevention system for next time. "Covid 19 can be the last pandemic if we take the right steps." But the answer isn't vaccines. "We also need vaccines, but we want to stop the outbreak before we have to do a global vaccination campaign." And then Gates points out that currently it could take months to get resources to a low-income country experiencing an outbreak.

Read on for Slashdot's report on Gates' proposed solution — and how he feels about his own prominence in anti-vaccine misinformation.

Once every 10 years there's a report released by America's National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Released this year, the report recommends prioritizing a mission to the planet Uranus to map its gravitational and magnetic fields and study how the planet's internal heat moves to the surface.

BGR reports: Despite being the seventh planet in our solar system, there's very little we know about Uranus as a whole. In fact, one of the best images we have of the planet was captured in 1986 by the Voyager 2... Additionally, scientists want to learn more about the various moons that surround the planet. We also know very little about the ring system that surrounds the blue planet. A team led by Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab wrote a white paper on their goals....

We currently already have the tech we need to get a spacecraft there that can orbit the planet. Additionally, scientists have found that launching a mission in 2031 would allow us to capitalize on gravity assistance from Jupiter.
The report also recommends studying Enceladus, an icy moon orbiting Saturn which has shown signs it could sustain microbial life.

Thanks to Slashdot reader alaskana98 for submitting the story.

Analysis of thousands of tumours has unveiled a treasure trove of clues about the causes of cancer, representing a significant step towards the personalisation of treatment. The Guardian: Researchers say that for the first time it is possible to detect patterns -- called mutational signatures -- in the DNA of cancers. These provide clues including about whether a patient has had past exposure to environmental causes of cancer such as smoking or UV light, for example. This is important as these signatures allow doctors to look at each patient's tumour and match it to specific treatments and medications. However, these patterns can be detected only through analysis of the vast amounts of data unearthed by whole genome sequencing -- identifying the genetic makeup of a cell.

China's largest city has recorded just 17 Covid deaths, despite surging cases. How China defines a Covid death may be part of the reason. The New York Times: By the numbers, Shanghai has been an exemplar of how to save lives during a pandemic. Despite the city's more than 400,000 Covid-19 infections, just 17 people have died, according to officials, statistics they have touted as proof that their strategy of strict lockdowns and mass quarantines works. But those numbers may not give a complete picture of the outbreak's toll. China typically classifies Covid-related deaths more narrowly than many other countries, labeling some chronically ill patients who die while infected as victims of those other conditions. In addition, a nearly three-week lockdown of China's biggest city has limited access to medicine and care for other illnesses. A nurse who suffered an asthma attack died after being denied care because of virus controls. A 90-year-old man died of complications from diabetes after being turned away from an overwhelmed hospital.

"If, at the time, he had been able to get treatment, he probably would have survived," said the man's granddaughter, Tracy Tang, a 32-year-old marketing manager. Residents and frontline workers have also been pushed to their limits by the policies. A hospital worker started bleeding internally after long hours conducting mass testing; she, too, died. It may never become clear how many similar stories there are. China does not release information on excess deaths, defined as the number of deaths -- from Covid as well as other causes -- exceeding the expected total in a given period. Public health scholars say that figure more accurately captures losses during the pandemic, as countries define Covid-related deaths differently. But as an example of the hidden impacts, a prominent Chinese physician recently estimated that nearly 1,000 more diabetes patients could die than expected during Shanghai's lockdown, urging the authorities to take a more measured response.

The outbreak there has revived questions about the true toll of Covid in China, which has officially reported fewer than 5,000 deaths from the coronavirus in two years. Beijing is unlikely to waver from its stringent approach. China's leader, Xi Jinping, has made the country's low death and infection rates central to his administration's legitimacy. Officials have been fired after even a few cases were detected in their jurisdictions. Last week, Mr. Xi said that "prevention and control work cannot be relaxed." The focus on minimizing Covid deaths risks incentivizing officials to neglect other causes of death, said Xi Chen, a professor of public health at Yale.