New submitter wooloohoo shares a report from Ars Technica: The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine means a ton of people are soon going to be looking for vaccination sites. As usual, Google wants to be at the center of getting people where they're going, and in a new blog post Google says it will start loading Search and Maps with information on vaccination sites. "In the coming weeks," the company writes, "COVID-19 vaccination locations will be available in Google Search and Maps, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, with more states and countries to come."

Soon you'll be able to search "COVID vaccine" and get location results showing access requirements, appointment information, and if a site has a drive-through. Google says it is partnering with the Boston Children's Hospital's VaccineFinder.org, government agencies, and retail pharmacies for the data. Elsewhere in the Google Empire, the company says it will open up various Google facilities as vaccine sites. "Google also says it plans on launching a 'Get the Facts' campaign across its services," the report adds. "The post says the initiative will run across Google and YouTube to 'get authoritative information out to the public about vaccines.'"

Moderna's Covid vaccine appears to work against new, more infectious variants of the pandemic virus found in the UK and South Africa, say scientists from the US pharmaceutical company. The BBC reports: Early laboratory tests suggest antibodies triggered by the vaccine can recognize and fight the new variants. More studies are needed to confirm this is true for people who have been vaccinated. Current vaccines were designed around earlier variants, but scientists believe they should still work against the new ones, although perhaps not quite as well. There are already some early results that suggest the Pfizer vaccine protects against the new UK variant.

For the Moderna study, researchers looked at blood samples taken from eight people who had received the recommended two doses of the Moderna vaccine. The findings are yet to be peer reviewed, but suggest immunity from the vaccine recognizes the new variants. Neutralizing antibodies, made by the body's immune system, stop the virus from entering cells. Blood samples exposed to the new variants appeared to have sufficient antibodies to achieve this neutralizing effect, although it was not as strong for the South Africa variant as for the UK one. Moderna says this could mean that protection against the South Africa variant might disappear more quickly. Moderna says it's investigating whether a redesigned vaccine would be more effective against the new variants. It's also testing whether giving a third booster shot might be beneficial.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday said the company will make its office facilities available for COVID-19 vaccination clinics, as tech giants aim to speed up distribution efforts in the US. From a report: The company said it's partnering with the health care provider One Medical for the clinics, which will be opened "as needed" at Google buildings, parking lots and open spaces. For now, Google is targeting its campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the company is headquartered; Los Angeles; New York City; and Kirkland, Washington, outside of Seattle. [...] The company also said it will use artificial intelligence from its Google Cloud division to help health care providers and pharmacies with the logistics of vaccine distribution. That includes detecting changes in the temperature of vaccine doses, which must be stored in cool conditions. Google also said it's committing more than $150 million in free ads and other investments to public health agencies and nonprofits promoting vaccine education.

David Leonhardt won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2011. This week in a New York Times newsletter, he argues that early in the pandemic experts around the world mistakenly discouraged mask use because of "a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also [at the time] unsure how much ordinary masks would help."

But are they now spreading a similarly misguided pessimism about vaccines? Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They're not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn't change their behavior once they get their shots...

"It's going to save your life — that's where the emphasis has to be right now," Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are "essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease," Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said. "It's ridiculously encouraging."

Here's my best attempt at summarizing what we know:

- The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That's on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn't even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.

- If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.

Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did.
The article suggests less-positive messages are being conveyed in part because "As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty."

But the article ultimately concludes that in fact, "the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure."

Darrell Etherington reports via TechCrunch: Web infrastructure company Cloudflare is releasing a new tool today that aims to provide a way for health agencies and organizations globally tasked with rolling out COVID-19 vaccines to maintain a fair, equitable and transparent digital queue -- completely free of charge. The company's Project Fair Shot initiative will make its new Cloudflare Waiting Room offering free to any organization that qualifies, essentially providing a way for future vaccine recipients to register and gain access to a clear and constantly-updated view of where they are in line to receive the preventative treatment.

On the technical side, Cloudflare Waiting Room is simple to implement, according to the company, and can be added to any registration website built on the company's existing content delivery network without any engineering or coding knowledge required. Visitors to the site can register and will receive a confirmation that they're in line, and then will receive a follow-up directing them to a sign-up page for the organization administering their vaccine when it's their turn. Further configuration options allow Waiting Room operators to offer wait time estimates to registrants, as well as provide additional alerts when their turn is nearing (though that functionality is coming in a future update).

Waiting Room was already on Cloudflare's project roadmap, and was actually intended for other high-demand, limited supply allocation items: Think must-have concert tickets, or the latest hot sneaker release. But the Fair Shot program will provide it totally free to those organizations that need it, whereas that would've been a commercial product. Interested parties can sign up at Cloudflare's registration page to get on the waitlist for availability.

An anonymous reader Phys.Org: The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that the collaborative research team led by Dr. Kwan Hyi Lee from the Biomaterials Research Center and Professor In Gab Jeong from Asan Medical Center developed a technique for diagnosing prostate cancer from urine within only 20 minutes with almost 100% accuracy. The research team developed this technique by introducing a smart AI analysis method to an electrical-signal-based ultrasensitive biosensor. As a noninvasive method, a diagnostic test using urine is convenient for patients and does not need invasive biopsy, thereby diagnosing cancer without side effects. However, as the concentration of cancer factors is low in urine, urine-based biosensors are only used for classifying risk groups rather than for precise diagnosis thus far.

Dr. Lee's team at the KIST has been working toward developing a technique for diagnosing disease from urine with an electrical-signal-based ultrasensitive biosensor. An approach using a single cancer factor associated with a cancer diagnosis was limited in increasing the diagnostic accuracy to over 90%. However, to overcome this limitation, the team simultaneously used different kinds of cancer factors instead of using only one to enhance the diagnostic accuracy innovatively.

The team developed an ultrasensitive semiconductor sensor system capable of simultaneously measuring trace amounts of four selected cancer factors in urine for diagnosing prostate cancer. They trained AI by using the correlation between the four cancer factors, which were obtained from the developed sensor. The trained AI algorithm was then used to identify those with prostate cancer by analyzing complex patterns of the detected signals. The diagnosis of prostate cancer by utilizing the AI analysis successfully detected 76 urinary samples with almost 100 percent accuracy. The results of the study have been published in the journal ACS Nano.

According to new research from Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics (NS), almost a third of recovered COVID-19 patients will end up back in the hospital within five months and one in eight will die. Yahoo News reports via The Telegraph: Out of 47,780 people who were discharged from hospital in the first wave, 29.4 per cent were readmitted to hospital within 140 days, and 12.3 per cent of the total died. The current cut-off point for recording Covid deaths is 28 days after a positive test, so it may mean thousands more people should be included in the coronavirus death statistics. Researchers have called for urgent monitoring of people who have been discharged from hospital.

Study author Kamlesh Khunti, professor of primary care diabetes and vascular medicine at Leicester University, said: "This is the largest study of people discharged from hospital after being admitted with Covid. People seem to be going home, getting long-term effects, coming back in and dying. We see nearly 30 per cent have been readmitted, and that's a lot of people. The numbers are so large. The message here is we really need to prepare for long Covid. It's a mammoth task to follow up with these patients and the NHS is really pushed at the moment, but some sort of monitoring needs to be arranged."

The study found that Covid survivors were nearly three and a half times more likely to be readmitted to hospital, and die, in the 140 days timeframe than other hospital outpatients. Prof Khunti said the team had been surprised to find that many people were going back in with a new diagnosis, and many had developed heart, kidney and liver problems, as well as diabetes. "We don't know if it's because Covid destroyed the beta cells which make insulin and you get Type 1 diabetes, or whether it causes insulin resistance, and you develop Type 2, but we are seeing these surprising new diagnoses of diabetes,â he added. "We've seen studies where survivors have had MRS scans and they've cardiac problems and liver problems. These people urgently require follow up and the need to be on things like aspirin and statins."

Smartwatches and other wearable devices that continuously measure users' heart rates, skin temperature and other physiological markers can help spot coronavirus infections days before an individual is diagnosed. From a report: Devices like the Apple Watch, Garmin and Fitbit watches can predict whether an individual is positive for COVID-19 even before they are symptomatic or the virus is detectable by tests, according to studies from leading medical and academic institutions, including Mount Sinai Health System in New York and Stanford University in California. Experts say wearable technology could play a vital role in stemming the pandemic and other communicable diseases. Researchers at Mount Sinai found that the Apple Watch can detect subtle changes in an individual's heartbeat, which can signal that an individual has the coronavirus, up to seven days before they feel sick or infection is detected through testing. "Our goal was to use tools to identify infections at time of infection or before people knew they were sick," said Rob Hirten, assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and author of the Warrior Watch study. Specifically, the study analyzed a metric called heart rate variability -- the variation in time between each heartbeat -- which is also a measure of how well a person's immune system is working.

CNN reports: According to Johns Hopkins University's tally of cases in the United States, there have been at least 23,754,315 cases of coronavirus in the U.S., and at least 395,785 deaths. On Saturday, Johns Hopkins reported 198,218 new cases and 3,286 new deaths...

On Friday, the CDC said new more contagious variants of the coronavirus will likely accelerate the spread of the virus and that means the US must double down on efforts to protect people.
The U.S. Census Bureau calculates the country's entire population is 330,827,996 people. These figures suggest 7.18% of the American population has now experienced the disease — more than 1 out of every 14 Americans.

Facebook is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to help doctors predict whether they will need more resources, such as extra oxygen to care for COVID-19 patients in hospitals. CNET reports: The social network said Friday it developed two AI models, one based on a single chest X-ray, and another from a series X-rays, that could help forecast if a patient infected by the coronavirus is likely to get worse. A third model predicts the amount of extra oxygen a COVID-19 patient might need. Facebook's AI models generally did a better job than a human when it came to forecasting up to four days in advance if a patient will need more intensive care resources.

Partnering with with New York University Langone Health's Predictive Analytics Unit and Department of Radiology, Facebook's AI research is another example of how tech companies are trying to help the health industry battle COVID-19. [...] Facebook's models rely on a technique in which AI learns on its own rather than depending on data labelled by humans, which can be a time-consuming process. The social network and NYU are publishing their research and open sourcing the AI models.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: A coalition of health and technology organizations are working to develop a digital COVID-19 vaccination passport to allow businesses, airlines and countries to check if people have received the vaccine. The Vaccination Credential Initiative, announced on Thursday, is formulating technology to confirm vaccinations in the likelihood that some governments will mandate people provide proof of their shots in order to enter the nation. The organization hopes the technology will allow people to "demonstrate their health status to safely return to travel, work, school and life while protecting their data privacy."

The initiative, which includes members like Microsoft, Oracle and U.S. nonprofit Mayo Clinic, is using the work from member Commons Project's international digital document that verifies a person has tested negative for COVID-19, the Financial Times reported. The Commons Project's technology, created in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, is being utilized by three major airline alliances. The coalition is reportedly in discussions with several governments to create a program requiring either negative tests or proof of vaccination to enter, Paul Meyer, the chief executive of The Commons Project, told the Times. The technology will need to allow patients to keep their data secure while being available in a digital wallet or a physical QR code for them to regulate who sees the information.

Razer has created a concept reusable N95 respirator called Project Hazel, featuring Chroma RGB LEDs and microphones and amplifiers to project your voice. The Verge reports: It's a concept design with a glossy outside shell made of waterproof and scratch-resistant recycled plastic, which is transparent to allow for lip-reading and seeing facial cues when you chat with people. Currently, there isn't a price or release date attached. Razer refers to Project Hazel as a surgical N95, but it hasn't yet earned any of the necessary approvals and certifications from the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In a statement to The Verge, Razer said it is working with a team of medical experts and scientists who are helping to develop the mask.

The main features of this mask lie within its two circular zones that flank your mouth. They're used for ventilation, giving the device an almost futuristic gas mask look. Razer claims Project Hazel will use active disc-type ventilators, filtering air that's breathed in, as well as the CO2 that's being exhaled. The company adds that it will be certified to filter 95 percent of airborne particles, including the COVID-19 virus and other common pathogens. [...] Microphones and amplifiers embedded in the ventilators will project your voice through the mask, so you won't have to worry about sounding muffled. Razer told us that it's working with THX sound engineers to find a balance in terms of how loud the speakers should be for accessibility purposes. [...] Each of the respirator-meets-amplifier rings can glow in the color of your choosing. And when it gets dark, a set of LEDs activate automatically to shine light on your mouth so others can still see you talk. The company also envisions that each mask will include a large charging case that sterilizes the mask with UV light when it's not in use.

According to Reuters, the CDC is expected to sign an order on Tuesday requiring nearly all international air travelers to test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours of departure. Those under 2 and passengers connecting through the UK are exempt. From the report: The new rules are to take effect two weeks from the day they are signed by CDC Director Mark Redfield, which would be Jan. 26. The CDC has been urgently pressing for an expansion of the requirements with the Trump administration for weeks. One remaining issue is how to address some countries that have limited testing capacity and how the CDC would address travel to those countries, the sources said.

At a White House meeting on Monday, Redfield again made an urgent case to adopt the testing requirements as new strains of COVID-19 are identified in different parts of the world. He raised concerns that vaccines could potentially not be effective against new strains, sources said. U.S. officials do not plan to drop restrictions that were adopted starting in March that ban most non-U.S. citizens who have been in most of Europe, the United Kingdom and Brazil as soon as possible, the sources said. They added that public health officials are sympathetic to the push to lift the restrictions that apply only to a limited number of countries.

Slashdot reader the_newsbeagle shares an article from IEEE Spectrum: Many associate XPrize with a $10-million award offered in 1996 to motivate a breakthrough in private space flight. But the organization has since held other competitions related to exploration, ecology, and education. And in November, they launched the Pandemic Response Challenge, which will culminate in a $500,000 award to be split between two teams that not only best predict the continuing global spread of COVID-19, but also prescribe policies to curtail it...

For Phase 1, teams had to submit prediction models by 22 December... Up to 50 teams will make it to Phase 2, where they must submit a prescription model... The top two teams will split half a million dollars. The competition may not end there. Amir Banifatemi, XPrize's chief innovation and growth officer, says a third phase might test models on vaccine deployment prescriptions. And beyond the contest, some cities or countries might put some of the Phase 2 or 3 models into practice, if Banifatemi can find adventurous takers.

The organizers expect a wide variety of solutions. Banifatemi says the field includes teams from AI strongholds such as Stanford, Microsoft, MIT, Oxford, and Quebec's Mila, but one team consists of three women in Tunisia. In all, 104 teams from 28 countries have registered. "We're hoping that this competition can be a springboard for developing solutions for other really big problems as well," Miikkulainen says. Those problems include pandemics, global warming, and challenges in business, education, and healthcare. In this scenario, "humans are still in charge," he emphasizes. "They still decide what they want, and AI gives them the best alternatives from which the decision-makers choose."

But Miikkulainen hopes that data science can help humanity find its way. "Maybe in the future, it's considered irresponsible not to use AI for making these policies," he says.
For the Covid-19 competition, Banifatemi emphasized that one goal was "to make the resulting insights available freely to everyone, in an open-source manner — especially for all those communities that may not have access to data and epidemiology divisions, statisticians, or data scientists."

"As COVID-19 relentlessly infects more and more of us, scientists are getting a close look at the strange and frightening damage it can inflict on our bodies," writes Science Alert (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo): We've known since early in the pandemic this disease wreaks havoc on more than just the respiratory system, also causing gastrointestinal conditions, heart damage and blood clotting disorders. Now, a year into the pandemic, in-depth autopsies of COVID-19 patients have revealed greater details of widespread inflammation and damage in brain tissues. This may help explain the deluge of neurological symptoms that have manifested in some patients, from headaches, memory loss, dizziness, weakness and hallucinations to more severe seizures and strokes.

Some estimate that up to 50 percent of those hospitalised with COVID-19 could have neurological symptoms that can leave people struggling to do even common daily tasks like preparing a meal. "We were completely surprised. Originally, we expected to see damage that is caused by a lack of oxygen," said physician and clinical director at National Institute of Health (NIH), Avindra Nath. "Instead, we saw multifocal areas of damage that is usually associated with strokes and neuroinflammatory diseases...."

Their report was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The article also remembers a September remark by a University of Liverpool neurologist to Nature magazine back in September who had also suggested possible neurological symptoms from COVID-19. "We've seen this group of younger people without conventional risk factors who are having strokes, and patients having acute changes in mental status that are not otherwise explained."

The Weather Channel reports: One main reason humans need to get a flu vaccine annually: flu strains mutate regularly so vaccines need to be slightly altered every year. During past flu seasons, the CDC has noted a vaccine effectiveness range between 40-60%, and a reduced the risk of flu-related illness by 40-60% within the overall population. There are, however, several "universal" flu vaccines currently being studied that aim to make annual flu vaccinations a thing of the past. In fact, according to the American Society for Microbiology, some of these vaccine candidates are in phase 2 and phase 3 trials right now.
Now UPI reports: Researchers believe they are one step closer to a "universal" flu vaccine, even as concerns over the seasonal virus move to the back burner during the COVID-19 pandemic. T cells found in the lungs may hold the key to long-lasting immunity against influenza A, the more common and often more severe form of the virus, according to the researchers behind a study published Friday by Science Immunology.

These cells, which the researchers call resident helper T cells, help the body initiate antiviral responses against new influenza strains even after experience with only one type of the virus, the researchers said. This type of "generalized" immune response, against all virus strains, is not possible with the currently available yearly vaccine formulations, they said.

A new study provides early evidence that a Covid-19 vaccine might be effective against two new coronavirus strains first identified in South Africa and the UK, despite a concerning mutation. CNN reports: The two strains share a mutation known as N501Y that scientists worry could allow the virus to evade the immune protection generated by a vaccine. In research posted online Thursday, scientists found that antibodies from people who had received the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine showed "no reduction in neutralization activity" against a version of the virus that carries the N501Y mutation, which they created in the lab. In order to do this, researchers tested the virus against blood from 20 people who had received two doses of the vaccine as part of a clinical trial.

The N501Y mutation is located in the coronavirus' spike protein -- the same structure targeted by vaccines. The virus uses this protein to enter the cells it attacks. This particular mutation appears to help the virus attach to human cells, which may partly explain why these new strains appear to be more transmissible. But it is just one of many mutations in both strains that scientists have worried could make the virus less susceptible to vaccines or treatments. The study -- conducted by researchers at Pfizer and the University of Texas Medical Branch -- does not test the full array of these mutation, nor has it been peer-reviewed.

UK scientists have expressed concern that COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in Britain may not be able to protect against a new variant of the coronavirus that emerged in South Africa and has spread internationally. From a report: Both Britain and South Africa have detected new, more transmissible variants of the COVID-19-causing virus in recent weeks that have driven a surge in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday he was now very worried about the variant identified in South Africa. Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said that while both variants had some new features in common, the one found in South Africa "has a number additional mutations ... which are concerning." He said these included more extensive alterations to a key part of the virus known as the spike protein -- which the virus uses to infect human cells -- and "may make the virus less susceptible to the immune response triggered by the vaccines." Lawrence Young, a virologist and professor of molecular oncology at Warwick University, also noted that the South African variant has "multiple spike mutations."

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the key to keeping people healthy in the United States is for people to eat better and live healthier lives. From a report: "I mean, honestly, we talk about health care. The best solution is not to need health care," Mackey told Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner in an episode. "The best solution is to change the way people eat, the way they live, the lifestyle, and diet," Mackey says. "There's no reason why people shouldn't be healthy and have a longer health span. A bunch of drugs is not going to solve the problem." Americans are not taking as good care of their own bodies as they ought to be, Mackey says: "71% of Americans are overweight and 42.5% are obese. Clearly, we're making bad choices in the way we eat," he says. "It's not a sustainable path. And so, I'm calling it out."

Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America's most powerful companies to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care, is disbanding after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively. From a report: The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Many of the Boston-based firm's 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the firms each individually push forward in their efforts, and the three companies are still expected to collaborate informally on healthcare projects, the people said. The announcement three years ago that the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase had teamed up to tackle one of the biggest problems facing corporate America -- high and rising costs for employee health care -- sent shock waves throughout the world of medicine. Shares of healthcare companies tumbled on fears about how the combined might of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system. Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Haven, confirmed the company's plans to close.