. The researchers behind front-running vaccine candidate from the U.K. were forced to hit pause as scientists studied an adverse reaction . And University of Hong Kong scientists have evidence of someone being infected with COVID-19 for a second time, months apart from his first infection, with a different strain of the coronavirus.
With school starting up again, are there any short turnaround COVID tests reliable to use to keep staff and students safe? With the weather getting colder and extracurricular activities moving indoors, is there any difference in risk of exposure between being in a cold arena for a sport like hockey and a hot gym with folks playing basketball?
This is an issue that is not very well informed by science. We know a lot about what the virus could potentially do and how it can travel. What we don’t know is how important this is in day-to-day transmissions. There’s science that suggests the virus can spread across greater distances, but at the same time, we don’t see infection occurring efficiently over large distances as with other viruses, like measles.
Thinking longer-term, the Canadian government made purchase agreements with several vaccine manufacturers. Of course no one knows which, if any, vaccine candidate will be approved, or how effective it will be. But with so many in development worldwide, if Canada backs the wrong horse, is it possible other countries might have access to a vaccine months before Canadians will?
That would be surprising. Vaccines are generally targeting universally observed structures in the virus, the ones that are less likely to differ between one virus and another. We haven’t seen a huge degree of genetic variability for the populations of viruses across the world. They are different enough that we can trace them and see where they came from, but we haven’t seen the sort of rate of mutation that we’ve seen in other viruses like HIV.