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5 Important New Findings
A roundup of Covid-19 research from the past week
Published in
2 min readApr 17, 2020
- Lasting damage: Some important biological functions in 34 patients with mild and severe cases of Covid-19 “failed to return to normal” even after they recovered, Chinese scientists report in a recent preprint study uploaded to medRxiv. In blood samples of the patients, they found changes in the levels of lipids and metabolites, suggesting that the development of Covid-19 “affected patient metabolism.”
- Lessons from Iceland: Aggressive testing, quarantining, and physical distancing have effectively contained the spread of Covid-19 in Iceland, according to research published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The number of positive cases in Iceland didn’t change substantially during the study’s screening period, March 13 to April 1, which the authors say may be due to Iceland’s “nimble” response to the outbreak abroad: It started testing for the virus one month before its first case was confirmed on February 28.
- Before symptoms show: More than four out of every 10 people who caught Covid-19 were infected by someone who was in the presymptomatic phase of the disease, research in Nature on Wednesday shows. The researchers say the findings should be “urgently considered” in attempts at contact tracing, as they suggest transmission could occur two to three days before symptoms begin to show.
- Covid from a corpse: Scientists in Thailand reported the first known case of Covid-19 spreading from a dead body…
