Category: Antiviral

[Naples, Italy reports the country’s first case of "B1525" mutant new crown virus infection] The Finance Associated Press reported on February 17 that according to ANSA News Agency, the Italian Campania region government department stated that Frederick II in Naples The mutated new coronavirus named "B1525" was found in a sample test conducted jointly by the University of the World and the Pascale Institute. This is the first case in Italy, but its infectiousness and specific characteristics are not yet clear. According to the report, cases of this mutated new coronavirus infection have appeared in Britain, the United States, Denmark, Nigeria and other countries.

Europe's oldest person and the world's second oldest person has recovered from a novel coronavirus infection and will celebrate her 117th birthday today.

The Frenchman, a nun named Andrea and born Lucille Langdon in a nursing home in the southern French city of Toulon, was diagnosed with Novel coronavirus on Jan. 16.

The old man, who has shown no symptoms, has been released from quarantine, Reuters reported Monday.
"I didn't even realize I had the virus," the man said.

Sister Andrea has recovered, said Davide Tavila, a spokesman for the nursing home.
She is calm and looking forward to her 117th birthday on Thursday.

According to Tavella, Sister Andrea was not afraid when she learned that she was infected with novel coronavirus, but was very worried that she would infect other elderly people.
She also asked if being infected with the virus had affected her schedule of eating, sleeping and so on.

Of the 88 seniors in Sister Andrei's nursing home, 81 tested positive for novel coronavirus last month.
About 10 infected people have died.

Sister Andrea is the second oldest person in the world, according to the Geriatrics Research Group, after Japanese woman Rikoko Tanaka, who celebrated her 118th birthday on January 2.
One of the agency's main jobs is to verify the ages of people over 110 years old around the world.

The National Medical Research Center of Japan (NMRC) said its Covid-19 team had synthesized a special chemical that, when used in combination with the drug radecivir, can inhibit the reproduction of the virus.
In the future, if the specific drug of COVID-19 can be truly developed on this basis, it will be a good news for all mankind to fight against the epidemic and help all countries around the world to fight against the epidemic.

It is helpful to study Covid-19 specific drug

According to media reports, the team has previously produced more than 400 synthetic chemicals, and its focus has been on controlling specific proteases to prevent the virus from reproducing.
After a year-long study, the team finally identified two substances that can control the reproduction of Covid-19 virus.

One of them is a synthetic chemical that, when used in combination with the drug radecivir, can reduce the reproduction rate of the virus to one in 100 million.
However, the team has only developed the synthetic substance, but has not actually developed the Covid-19 magic bullet yet, which is still some time away.

Try to develop a specific medicine

Redecivir has been reported as a treatment for patients with COVID-19, but there is no clear evidence that it is an effective drug.
There is no real cure for CoviD-19, and people are still pinning their hopes on CoviD-19 vaccine.

In contrast to the race among pharmaceutical groups to develop a vaccine, the team had set their sights on a specific drug when they launched Covid-19 research in February last year.
In a series of studies, the team also found that Covid-19 propagates using a protease, which is essentially a catalyst, so the protease could be a key to stopping Covid-19 from propagating if the protease is eliminated in advance or if it is prevented from acting.

The epidemic situation in the world is critical

Although now many countries around the world have developed the COVID - 19 vaccines, including astrazeneca company, China national medicine group, the Chinese firm sinovac biological and other companies have successfully developed the COVID - 19 vaccine, countries around the world have begun vaccination work, but in fact only a few countries in the world can produce COVID - 19 vaccines, most countries there is no vaccine is available, the world health organization is to speed up vaccine procurement plan, is currently assessing the two vaccines.

Vaccination has not kept pace with the spread of Covid-19, which has now been diagnosed in more than 100 million people and is still rising.
It is also hoped that countries will be able to put aside ideological rivalries, provide vaccines as public health products for countries in need, and work together to combat the Covid-19 epidemic.

Today, the WHO expert team went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. US Secretary of State Blincoln said that China’s virus traceability arrangements are not transparent enough, and you answered relevant questions yesterday. When the expert group visited the Institute of Virology, what explanation did China give to the expert group?

Wang Wenbin: As a WHO official introduced at the press conference yesterday, the international expert group had fruitful discussions with the Chinese side. At the same time, it visited hospitals, markets, and CDCs. The work is progressing smoothly. Today the expert group will visit the Wuhan Virus Research Institute and have a discussion with experts from Huazhong Agricultural University. These activities are important content of the traceability exchange and cooperation between the two parties.

What needs to be pointed out is that virus traceability is a complex scientific problem, and we need to provide enough space for experts to engage in scientific research. China will, as always, uphold an open, transparent and responsible attitude, continue to cooperate with the WHO, and make its own contributions to better prevent future risks and protect the lives and health of people of all countries.

(I) Mankind has never ceased its struggle against pandemics

In December 7th, 2020, a new diagnosed case of local COVID-19 in Chengdu's Pidu District is rapidly entering a state of war, so it's urgent to conduct nucleic acid detection and detection in key areas. Currently, there are 12 confirmed cases.
In the context of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, it is inevitable that sporadic cases will appear in some places.

Throughout human history, man's struggle against pandemics has never ceased.

The Black Death around 1350 is thought to have been the deadliest plague outbreak in history, killing tens of millions of people and reducing Europe's population by a third.
The plague has not been eradicated, and there were also cases of plague in Inner Mongolia in July 2020.

HIV, for example, first appeared in Kinshasa in 1920, spread from chimpanzees in central and western Africa to humans, and later spread around the world.
On June 6, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the world's first case of HIV infection, and since then humanity has been battling the number one infectious disease for a long time.
Scientists around the world have yet to develop an effective vaccine against HIV.
The phrase "Patient zero," as you often hear it, was accidentally coined during the AIDS epidemic.
In the early 1980s, American CDC researchers investigating the spread of AIDS in San Francisco and Los Angeles used the Letter O to refer to someone outside California.
Other researchers mistakenly interpreted the letter as the number zero, so the use of patient zero was born.

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of HIV-1 budding from a cultured lymphocyte in green
Richard Preston, an American non-fiction writer, wrote in The Book The Blood Epidemic: There is only one flight between civilization and the virus.
A dangerous virus from the rainforest can reach any city on earth by plane within 24 hours.
Air lines connect all the cities in the world, forming a network.
Ebola has gone online and begun its journey around the world.
Ebola virus disease is a rare, severe and often fatal disease caused by the Ebola virus in the filoviridae family, with a mortality rate of up to 90%.

The Ebola virus first emerged in two simultaneous outbreaks in 1976, one in what is now Nzara, South Sudan, and the other in The Democratic Republic of Congo, Yangbuku.
The latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease got its name.
The incubation period for Ebola virus disease is between 2 and 21 days, and an infected person is not contagious until he or she shows symptoms.

The structure of the Ebola virus under an electron microscope
Symptoms vary, and the typical symptoms in the early stages are a rash, fever, extreme weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat.
As the illness progresses, patients tend to experience vomiting and diarrhea, rashes, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases internal and external bleeding.
Bleeding can occur through any hole in the body, including the nose, mouth, anus, genital organs or pinholes.
Ebola is a zoonotic virus. The main route of infection is through bodily fluids such as blood, sweat, vomit, excreta, urine, saliva or semen. There is no evidence of drome infection.
Despite painstaking research by the WORLD Health Organization (WHO), no animal host capable of surviving an outbreak has been identified, and fruit bats are now considered the likely original host.

Ervebo(RVSV-ZeboV), the first vaccine available for human use, was developed by Merck and approved by the European Medicines Agency (EFDA) on November 13, 2019 and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 19, 2019. Ervebo(RVSV-ZeboV) is a preventive vaccine for people aged 18 and over.

Pathogens are generally classified into four biosafety levels (BSL) based on their level of risk.
HIV is level 2, SARS is level 3 and Ebola is level 4.
What is the level of SARS-COV-2 that is now spreading around the world?
A pathology paper from the Royal College of Pathologists in Australia on SARS-COV-2 classification was published in December in the journal of pathology, regarding it as grade 3.
The article said that although SARS-COV-2 is a globally transmitted infection, its fatality rate is not high, ranging from 0.13% to 6.22%, far lower than that of Ebola virus (BSL4), which has a fatality rate of 90%.
Moreover, the study indicated that 86% of the patients with severe diseases are elderly people over 70 years old, among whom the elderly with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases have a higher mortality rate.
Sars-cov-2 is classified into grade 3 according to the laboratory protective equipment, virus infection rate and fatality rate.

(b) Novel Coronavirus discovery

Coronaviruses are a family of viruses found in animals and humans.
Some coronaviruses infect people and are known to cause more Severe illnesses such as colds, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
The first person to identify the human coronavirus was a woman, British virologist and viral imaging specialist June Almeida.
Almeida discovered the first human coronavirus at St Thomas's Hospital in London in 1964.
Novel Coronavirus was the virus from which British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been cured at St Thomas' Hospital.

In 1963, Joan Almeida was working at the Cancer Institute in Ontario, Canada
The coronavirus, which has been spreading around the world, has never been found in human beings. This is a new strain of the virus, and the symptoms of the disease are mainly caused by changes in pneumonia. Therefore, the disease was initially called "pneumonia of unknown cause" in China.
After laboratory isolation and identification, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention determined that the disease was caused by a completely new coronavirus infection, thus calling the disease "COVID-19".
In February of this year, THE WHO renamed COVID-19 diseases of poultry.
"CO" stands for coronavirus, "VI" for virus, "D" for disease, and "19" for the first case, which appeared in 2019.

On 31 January 2020, WHO declared that the COVID-19 outbreak constituted a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), based on the increase in the number of infected people in China and the emergence of outbreaks in several countries.
By mid-December 2020, there were more than 74.2 million confirmed cases and 1.65 million deaths globally.

The virus is now thought to have crossed species from a wild animal to humans and then to humans during wildlife trafficking, transportation, slaughtering and other processes.

Novel Coronavirus belongs to the genus coronavirus.
At present, it is believed to be the most similar to bat BAT SEVERE respiratory syndrome related coronaviruses from Chinese Horseshoes, with over 85% homology.
The nucleotide homology with human SARS-COV reached 78%.
It is significantly different from MERS-COV, and its homology is only about 50%.
Studies have shown the presence of a variety of coronaviruses in bats, particularly horseshoes.
But most bats live in tropical and subtropical rainforests or caves, far from human life.
Thus, viruses from bats need to evolve into animals in some semi-wild state (intermediate hosts) and, after some mutation and recombination, spread to humans.
The intermediate host of SARS is civets, while the intermediate host of MERS is dromedaries.

At present, novel Coronavirus was considered as the original host of Novel Coronavirus and pangolin as the potential animal host of SARS-COV-2. The sequence similarity of -coronavirus isolated from pangolin and the strain that infected human was up to 99%.
But there can be multiple intermediate hosts.
In the early stage of infection, the detection of animal hosts can effectively control and cut off the source of infection.
Asymptomatic COVID-19 infections can also be a source of infection.
This did not happen with SARS.
Asymptomatic infected persons, without any discomfort, are difficult to be diagnosed and isolated in a timely manner and are prone to infection in the community.

(III) Novel Coronavirus infection mechanism and transmission

This novel Coronavirus epidemic has been raging around the world for about a year. Why is novel Coronavirus so contagious?

Coronaviruses are plus-stranded single-stranded RNA viruses, which are the largest RNA viruses in the genome.
Coronaviruses have been isolated and identified in a variety of avian hosts and a variety of mammals, including vertebrates such as camels, mice, bats, dogs and cattle.
The coronavirus genus is divided into four groups:,, and coronavirus genus.
The main coronaviruses that infect mammals are and coronaviruses.
The coronaviruses that infect birds are mainly from, coronaviruses.
Novel Coronavirus is currently under the genus coronavirus.

Novel Coronavirus is similar to other coronaviruses in structure. Coronavirus particles are irregular in shape with a diameter of 60-220nm and an average diameter of 100nm. They are spherical or elliptic in shape and have diversity.
The virus particle has two layers of lipid envelope.
There are three kinds of glycoproteins on the membrane surface: spike (S) protein, envelope (E) protein, and membrane (M) protein.
Membrane protein M and enveloped protein E are involved in the assembly of the virus, while spike protein S is a key protein mediating the entry of the virus into host cells.
Novel Coronavirus binds to an angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor expressed in human airway epithelium and lung parenchyma.
During this period, The S protein is like a key, which binds to the host cell ACE2 receptor and mediates the entry of the virus into the cell. Therefore, the S protein is a key glycoprotein and can also be used as a major therapeutic target.
Although the novel Coronavirus is very similar to the SARS-COV that caused SARS(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), some key mutations in the S protein receptor binding domain greatly increase the binding force of the novel Coronavirus and ACE2.
This increase in binding force may be the molecular basis for higher transmissibility of COVID-19.

COVID-19
Novel Coronavirus, in addition to intrusions into the respiratory system, has shown in clinical data that a large proportion of COVID-19 patients have varying degrees of liver and kidney damage. Studies have shown that this may be related to the widespread expression of ACE2 in various organs of the human body, including the lungs, digestive system, heart, arteries, kidneys, bladder and ileum.
In addition, both Chinese and American scholars have found that ACE2 gene expression in male testis is the highest in human body, including testicular stromal cells, spermatozoal cells and renal tubular cells, suggesting that novel Coronavirus is highly likely to cause testicular injury and male infertility, which is consistent with the clinical symptoms of orchitis in some male patients.

At present, it is considered that novel coronavirus is mainly transmitted by respiratory droplets and contact transmission. In special cases, aerosol transmission and fecal-oral transmission may be involved.
Patients transmit the virus through droplets produced by coughing, sneezing and talking.
Novel Coronavirus can also deposit on the surface of articles, such as door handles, food, mobile phones, etc., infect the hands by touching them, and then touch the mucous membranes such as mouth and nose, resulting in virus infection.

The tinder effect is used to visualize the droplets produced when a man sneezes
(IV) Clinical manifestations, treatment principles and prevention of COVID-19

Based on the current epidemiological investigation, the incubation period of COVID-19 is 1-14 days, and most cases are 3-7 days.
The most common clinical symptom is fever (38.1-39 degrees Celsius at most).
Weakness and myalgia are also two common nonspecific symptoms.
Since novel Coronavirus mainly attacks the respiratory tract, cough is also a common symptom, with dry cough most common.
Breath promotion and dyspnea also occur in some moderate to severe patients.
Some patients also experience gastrointestinal symptoms, such as diarrhea.
The diagnosis of COVID-19 also requires the combination of imaging and laboratory tests.
CT scan is recommended for imaging examination. The CT images are mostly ground glass like changes, but in severe patients, lung consolidation, pleural effusion and so on May occur.
In laboratory tests, patients often have normal or reduced white blood cell count, reduced lymphocyte count, increased C-reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and normal calcitonin. Some patients can have increased levels of liver enzyme, lactic dehydrogenase (LDH), myoenzyme and myoglobin (mostly transient).
Increased troponin, D-dimer, and other inflammatory factors were observed in some patients with severe or critical diseases, and progressive decrease of peripheral lymphocytes was observed.
Pathogeny test, RT-PCR test sarS-COV-2 nucleic acid positive;
The viral genome sequencing, which is homologous to the known highly virulent SARS-COV-2, can meet the diagnostic requirements.

Suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 should be treated in a designated medical facility with conditions of isolation and protection.
According to the severity of the patient's condition, bed rest should be taken, support treatment should be strengthened, and sufficient calories should be ensured.
Pay attention to the balance of water and electrolyte to maintain the stability of the internal environment;
Closely monitor vital signs, oxygen saturation, etc.
Monitoring blood routine, urine routine, CRP, biochemical index, coagulation function, arterial blood gas analysis, chest imaging, etc.
Discharge standard, temperature returned to normal for more than 3 days;
Respiratory symptoms improved significantly;
Pulmonary imaging lesions were significantly changed.
Negative nucleic acid test of respiratory tract specimens for 2 consecutive times;
When the nucleic acid test of respiratory tract specimens was negative, the fecal pathogen nucleic acid test was negative.
The total course of disease is more than 2 weeks.
The discharged patients should be followed up closely.

Symptoms of COVID-19
COVID-19 has a certain self-limitation, and most mild patients have a good prognosis, with a total course of disease of 2-3 weeks.
Deaths are more common in the elderly and in patients with chronic underlying diseases.

Clinically, there are few targeted and specific treatments for COVID-19, mainly supporting and symptomatic treatment.
Therefore, for this kind of viral diseases, prevention is more important than treatment.
For the public, wearing masks is an easy and convenient way to prevent COVID-19.
Maintain good personal hygiene and wash your hands frequently.
Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue or elbow when coughing or sneezing, keep a social distance, and keep the room ventilated.
Novel coronavirus can survive for at least 1 day or several days ona dry surface such as stainless steel or plastic, so it is important to disinfect these surfaces as well.
Novel coronavirus is sensitive to uv and heat, and novel coronavirus can inactivate the virus effectively at 56℃ for 30min, ether, 75% ethanol, chlorine-containing disinfectant, peracetic acid, chloroform and other lipid solvents, while chlorine can't inactivate the virus effectively.

What about nucleic acid testing?

The nucleic acid determination principle is to isolate the viral nucleic acid in the respiratory tract of patients, increase the number of viral nucleic acid by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and then detect with a fluorescent probe that can identify novel Coronavirus nucleic acid. The whole process lasts for about 2-4 hours and requires professional operation.
The technique was invented in 1983 by Kary Mullis, an American biochemist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

(v) COVID-19 drugs and vaccines

Novel Coronavirus is a novel that will coexist with humanity for a long time to come.
Since the virus cannot be expected to disappear naturally, vaccines are the solution.

Vaccines:

Vaccines work in the same way, teaching the human immune system to respond to foreign viruses.
Currently, vaccines commonly used include hepatitis A, hepatitis B, human papillomavirus (HPV), influenza, measles, mumps, rubella (MMR), poliomyelitis, rabies, etc.
Adenovirus and smallpox vaccines are only available to high-risk groups.
Smallpox was basically eradicated in 1978, rinderpest in 2010.
Except in a few countries where logistics and religious beliefs prevented vaccination, polio has been largely eradicated.

At present, scientists around the world are stepping up the research and development of COVID-19 vaccines, some of which have entered the stage of clinical trials.
China has 4 vaccine into Ⅲ phase of clinical trial, in which three is inactivated vaccines, paragraph 1 of adenovirus vector vaccine.
On November 25, it was reported that Sinopac had submitted an application to the China Food and Drug Administration for the marketing of COVID-19 vaccine.
The COVID-19 vaccines developed by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products under the China National Pharmaceutical Corporation are both inactivated vaccines.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has officially approved the marketing of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Sinopac (China Pharmaceutical Group) on Dec 9.
An interim analysis of data from the final phase of the trial showed that the vaccine had an overall response rate of 86 per cent, with a serum conversion rate of 99 per cent for neutralising antibodies and 100 per cent for the prevention of moderate and severe disease, the ministry of Health said in a statement.

Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, developed in conjunction with BioNTech, and Moderna's vaccine are mRNA vaccines.
One of the world's most promising vaccines is based on mrnmrA-based technology pioneered by Katalin Kariko, a Hungarian-american female scientist.
An mRNA vaccine does not require an actual virus to be injected into the human body. Instead, it creates a piece of RNA that triggers the same immune response in the body that makes the antibody work.
First, it is safe and has few side effects.
There is no real virus injected into the body, only an immune response, so it is impossible for a person to catch a virus from the injection, with far fewer side effects.
Second, the effectiveness is strong.
The average flu vaccine is only more than 50 percent effective.
Previously, the medical community had expected messenger RNA vaccines to be 60-70% effective.
The results of the two companies' large-scale trials showed more than 95 percent effectiveness.
Third, rapid development and production.
While conventional vaccines take months to make and eggs to grow, mrna vaccines do not require these steps, dramatically speeding up development in just a few weeks.
On December 2nd Britain became the first country in the world to approve Pfizer's vaccine;
On December 8th Britain became the first country in the world to start using Pfizer's vaccine.
On December 11, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use in the US.
Pfizer's vaccine began in the United States on December 14.
Pfizer's vaccine began in Canada on December 15.
On December 17, the FDA approved an emergency vaccination request for Moderna inc. 's vaccine.

Here's one more thing to add:

MRNA vaccine, a relatively safe new nucleic acid vaccine, is used for the first time in the world.
Molecular design and chemical modification of mRNA vaccines are currently focused on enhancing their stability and reducing their immunogenicity.
MRNA vaccine directly injects mRNA encoding S protein gene into human body, uses human cells to synthesize S protein in the body, and stimulates human body to produce antibodies.
The advantage of mRNA vaccine is that it does not need to synthesize virus or protein, the process is simple and the safety is relatively high.
The disadvantage is that vaccine development is subject to technology, the nature of the mRNA itself and other factors, the mRNA itself is very unstable, easy to degrade.

Astrazeneca and Oxford University jointly developed the novel coronavirusS vaccine with defective chimpanzee adenovirus as the carrier, will novel coronavirusS protein gene into human cells, and then produce this protein, and guide the immune system to recognize and attack the virus, stimulate the human body to produce antibodies, chimpanzee adenovirus vector can not cause disease in humans.
Adenovirus vector vaccine has the advantages of safety, high efficiency, few adverse reactions, and can be stored under normal freezing conditions (2-8 degrees Celsius).

Developing a new vaccine is a long process.
The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people.
In fact, however, scientists at Public Health Canada had been working on an Ebola vaccine as early as 2003, and it wasn't until the Ebola outbreak that it actually entered clinical trials.
The trial ended successfully in November 2016, but it will take another three years of trials on 15,000 people before It becomes the first Ebola vaccine pre-certified by the World Health Organization on November 12, 2019.
As a rule, it can take up to 10 years from initial development to approval for a new vaccine.
However, in response to the novel Coronavirus, the world is racing against the clock to develop a safe and effective vaccine in the shortest time possible.

The availability of vaccine containers can also be a problem in the development and production of vaccines.
Vaccines are usually packed in small glass bottles.
Perhaps it's surprising that glass bottles are a finite resource?
The answer is yes.
The glass in the vaccine bottle is a special type of glass, borosilicate glass.
The glass is high temperature resistant and chemically stable, greatly reducing potential contamination from the bottle.
Because of the huge global demand for COVID-19 vaccines, the demand for vials will also increase, which may limit the number of vaccines available on the market.
The safe storage of vaccines is another concern.
Most vaccines need to be refrigerated, and the one developed by Pfizer needs to be kept at a temperature of -70 degrees Celsius.
Such extremely low temperature storage is common in laboratories, but not in general medical centers.

Vaccines are for prevention, drugs for treatment.

In recent years, the application of antiviral drugs has developed rapidly, and antiviral drugs can act directly at different stages of virus replication.
It can interfere with the attachment of virus particles to host cell membrane or viral nucleic acid shell.
Cell receptors or factors required to inhibit viral replication;
Blocking specific virus-encoding enzymes and proteins produced in host cells that are essential for virus replication but not required for normal host cell metabolism.

Virus-specific drugs such as nucleoside analogues (fabiravir, ribavirin, Redesivir, and galidavir) may have the potential to fight SARS-COV-2.
Rna-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) is an important component of the coronavirus replication and transcription complex and is involved in the production of genomic and subgenomic RNA.
Nucleoside analogues in the form of adenine or guanine derivatives target RNA-dependent RNA polymerases that block the synthesis of various RNA viruses.
Remdesivir (Gilead Sciences) is an aminophosphate prodrug derived from an adenine derivative that is chemically similar to propofol tenofovir, an approved HIV reverse transcriptase inhibitor.
Reddisivir has been shown to have broad-spectrum activity against RNA viruses such as SARS-COV and Mers-CoV in cell cultures and animal models.
In clinical trials of Ebola, however, the results have not been ideal.

Host specific drugs:

The main function of INTERFERon (IFN) is to block the transcription and translation of viral RNA and thereby prevent viral replication, without interfering with the normal function of host cells.

(vi) Reflection on COVID-19

Humans have no immunity to new infectious diseases. When diseases strike, everyone is susceptible.
If not prevented and controlled, no one will be spared.

Smallpox 1.

In 1898, archaeologists discovered a mummy with a shrivelled surface and a thick layer of pus scars on the lower side of his face, neck and shoulders, each a few millimeters in diameter and yellowish in color.
The mummy is that of The ancient Egyptian pharaoh Ramses V, who died in 1157 B.C.
Ramses V may have been the earliest known victim of smallpox.
Smallpox, a disease that frightened the royal family in costume dramas.
It is said that emperor Shunzhi died of smallpox. When he was about to die, he wanted to appoint his son Fuquan as the new emperor, but after consulting with the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, he chose Kangxi Xuanye as the emperor.
At that time, there was a folk saying, "After giving birth to only half a child, smallpox is the whole."
Xuanye suffered from smallpox when he was 2 years old. He suffered from smallpox and will never get smallpox again.
In ancient times, smallpox was the main cause of death in most children, and even if it survived, it left most sufferers blind, convulsed, disabled and disfigured.
Smallpox killed one in ten people in England in the 18th century and a third of children in Glasgow between 1783 and 1802, according to research.
Edward Jenner, an English doctor, was the first to invent and popularize vaccination against smallpox.
Vaccinia was widely used in various countries to prevent smallpox, which raged for more than 3,000 years in human history and finally died out in 1980.

A baby receives a polio vaccination

2. Penicillin

Penicillin refers to the molecule containing penicillane, can destroy the cell wall of bacteria and bacteria in the breeding period of bactericidal action of a class of antibiotics, is extracted from penicillium.
Diseases that used to be considered fatal, such as pneumonia, syphilis, peritonitis and tetanus, have all been overcome by penicillin.
Penicillin is the earliest humans found that antibiotics, st. Mary school of medicine at the university of London in 1928 (now at imperial college London), professor of bacteriology Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) Alexander Fleming, penicillium have antiseptic effect, found in laboratory at the university of Oxford in 1939 by Ernst burleigh, Chai En (Sir Ernst Boris Chain, 1906-1979), Howard walt Florida (Howard Walter Florey,
1898-1968) was refined by the team he led.
For this Fleming, Zayn and Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Penicillin is the father of antibiotics
Although people are frightened by the outbreak of infectious diseases, as people become more aware of the existing ones, they will eventually find solutions.

As COVID-19 prevention is becoming more common, ordinary citizens should wear masks, keep a social distance, wash their hands frequently, ventilate their rooms, and use chopsticks to share meals.
If we trust science and rely on science, we will be able to meet the challenge of all kinds of infectious diseases.

In early 2020, Academician Gao Fu "patted his chest" and said that the vaccine would definitely be developed.
He then added: "It takes a long, long time to develop a vaccine, to study a vaccine, but from what we've known about SARS or this type of virus in the past, I can say with a pat on the back that this vaccine will be successful."

It's not hard to see how when scientists started developing a vaccine for SARS-COV-2 in early 2020, everyone was wary of making promises like "quick success."
The success of mumps vaccine development in the 1960s was the fastest recorded vaccine preparation, taking only four years from sampling to approval.
It is therefore highly optimistic that a COVID-19 vaccine will be developed by the summer of 2021.

In early December, however, researchers working on several vaccines announced excellent results in large-scale trials and demonstrated the feasibility of a COVID-19 vaccine.
On December 2nd a vaccine produced by Pfizer, a pharmaceutical giant, in partnership with Bio NTech, a German biotech firm, became the first fully tested vaccine that could be used in an emergency.

Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, says the rate of advancement of COVID-19 vaccines "challenges every paradigm we can think of in vaccine development."
At the same time, Natalie Dean points out that if we can produce other vaccines at the same rate as COVID-19 vaccines on a competitive timeline, it's going to be amazing.
Diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and pneumonia kill millions of people every year, and new and deadly viruses are on the rise. If the speed of COVID-19 vaccine development is applied to the development of vaccines for these diseases, the impact will be immeasurable.

Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Harvard Medical School, says there is no doubt that the COVID-19 experience will change the future of vaccine science.
He said the current rate of development of COVID-19 vaccines showed that when there is a real global emergency, the vaccine can be developed at an unexpected rate, given adequate resources.
And new vaccine manufacturing methods, such as using mrnas, have been validated by the clinical response to COVID-19.
Researchers have also greatly accelerated the progress of the COVID-19 vaccine without compromising the safety of the people who are trying it.

Analysis of the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccine in the world can be attributed to the following reasons: 1. Previous studies on relevant viruses have laid a theoretical foundation; 2.

2. Faster ways to make vaccines;
3. The huge capital investment enables the company to carry out multiple tests at the same time;
4. Regulators acted faster than normal.
   Some of these factors could translate into lessons for other vaccines, particularly faster production platforms.

Still, there is no guarantee that this "quickness" will replicate perfectly with other viruses.
To achieve such rapid success again will require an equally large operational investment.
That is only possible with a similar sense of social and political urgency.
At the same time, the nature of the pathogen itself determines the feasibility of such "repeatability".
In short, the emergence of SARS-COV-2, a relatively slow mutation that happens to belong to a well-studied family of viruses, was fortunate for scientists.

For years, scientists around the world have focused on the coronaviruses that cause SARS (severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), including the development of new vaccines. This has laid a solid foundation for the development of COVID-19 vaccines, and has been surprisingly rewarding.
Vaccines made by Pfizer, BioNTech and Modena all use mrnas that encode spikes, which dock with human cell membranes and allow coronaviruses to invade cells.

Immunologist Akiko Iwasaki of the Yale School of Medicine comments that basic research on DNA vaccines has been going on for at least 25 years, and RNA vaccines have benefited from 10 to 15 years of robust research, including some cancer vaccines.
RNA technology was not mature enough five years ago, but is now basically on the road to perfection.
Researchers at the Us National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) concluded from their studies on MERS and SARS that mRNA vaccine antigen design of spike proteins requires sufficient adjustment of RNA sequence to stabilize the resulting spike proteins before docking with host cells.
The third vaccine, which is being tested in a phase III clinical trial in November and is being made by The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, does not use mRNA, but uses the viral vector (or carrier) to hold the genetic material that encodes sarS-COV-2 spike protein.
It also benefited from years of research into the carrier -- the company chose a modified form of adenovirus isolated from chimpanzee feces.
Beate Kampmann, director of the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said progress on these routine vaccines had also come from studies of SARS, MERS, Ebola and malaria, and that the method was still cheaper than using mRNA.

Vaccine researchers were mostly infected with SARS-COV-2 for various reasons, Iwasaki said.
Unlike HIV, herpes or even the flu, this virus does not mutate in large numbers and does not suppress the human immune system.
The herpes virus, by contrast, has more evasive effects-preventing antibodies from binding, which makes it difficult to find effective drugs to fight it;
The rapid mutation of the flu virus requires a different vaccine formulation for each flu season.

Funding: The slowest part of vaccine development is not finding candidate treatments, but testing them.
First, companies test the efficacy and safety of animals, then they test humans, and human testing involves three stages, including an increase in the number of people and a proportionate increase in costs, which usually takes several years.
The COVID-19 vaccine has gone through the same trials -- billions of vaccines are being poured into the process, requiring companies not only to run some tests simultaneously, but also to be able to take financial risks.

Rino Rappuoli, chief scientist at GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine division in Italy, says large sums of money provided to vaccine companies through public funders and private philanthropists can be used to conduct both pre-clinical and phase I, II and III trials or even vaccine manufacturing, rather than in sequence.
This means that companies can take the risk of starting large-scale testing and manufacturing of vaccine candidates that may not be able to solve COVID-19, which completely "upsets" the entire development process.

Without such funding, vaccine research would not have produced such rapid results.
For example, the Ebola virus that occurred from 2014 to 2016 was not funded on such a large scale, which caused a devastating impact on African communities, and it took a very long time to develop a vaccine for Ebola.
This time, the money has been cashed in because all countries -- rich and poor -- are facing this catastrophic COVID-19 outbreak.
Similar to ebola, future vaccine development, including for existing diseases like malaria, will not be as rapid.
But "there is no way to accelerate unless you invest money".

Peter Hotez, a virologist at Baylor College of Medicine, believes that big pharma may be motivated not just by a desire to stop the epidemic, but by the opportunity to gain government funding for its research and in-depth development.
It has to be acknowledged that previous infectious and deadly viruses contributed to the establishment of national and global infrastructures to facilitate faster vaccine development.
The ebola and Zika outbreaks, for example, provide a better global coordination mechanism for how to respond to infectious disease crises.

In particular, the Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) was launched in 2017.
The goal is to build the technological infrastructure needed to rapidly develop vaccines against several viruses with known epidemic potential, including MERS, Ebola and Zika.
In the final phase of the trial, CEPI assisted in the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.
The experience of COVID-19 has also prompted regulators to rethink.
While strict vaccine approval criteria have not been relaxed, most of the first vaccine candidates have been approved under emergency use regulations.

Other vaccine development: The COVID-19 pandemic should see some permanent changes in vaccine development.
First, mRNA vaccines -- which have never been approved before -- will revolutionize vaccinology.
It is not hard to see that mRNA vaccines can be chemically synthesized in a few days, in contrast to the more complex biotechnology that produces proteins in cells.
RNA greatly simplifies the manufacturing process and can be used to make RNA for different diseases in the same way, reducing the investment required and increasing the company's production capacity.

Still, other vaccines are likely to be developed at a similar pace only at high levels of infection, so that large-scale trials can be carried out relatively quickly and with substantial funding.
Other viruses may be more difficult to deal with than SARS-COV-2.

According to the statistics, there are at least 24 virus families that can infect humans, and we know little about the related virus families.
Rather than waiting for resources to be devoted to the next virus to pop up, it would be better to spend money now to set up a system to monitor all these viruses.
In other words, no amount of money will help without a solid scientific platform to back it up.
The success of the COVID-19 vaccine is a good example of how science can do or even accomplish something very quickly, but it doesn't happen overnight.

The new crown pneumonia epidemic in Japan has resurfaced since October and accelerated in early November. So far, it has not been effectively curbed. The number of newly confirmed cases in the metropolitan area remains high, the medical system is facing a peak of pressure, and the public is depressed and confused. Some US and European pharmaceutical companies that have launched a new crown vaccine are urging the Japanese side to speed up the approval of the use of their vaccine, and the Japanese side still needs to improve many conditions to implement large-scale vaccination.

In all fairness, compared with the United Kingdom and the United States and other countries, the Japanese government and medical system are doing their best in fighting the epidemic, and the people are generally able to cooperate with the implementation of epidemic prevention measures. At present, social public activities are not restricted, and the public security situation is generally good. At the end of the year, when people have to go back to their hometowns and provinces, make friends, go out for sightseeing, or do business, the flow of people is not decreasing but increasing. This has also become a potential factor for the spread of the epidemic in Japan.

The Japanese government has no good measures to fight the epidemic, medical staff are on the verge of collapse, social emotions are restless, and the cabinet's approval rating plummets. At this time, some pharmaceutical giants in the United States and Britain delivered the new crown vaccine at the right time, expressing that they would offer a safe and reliable vaccine to the Japanese people to alleviate Japan’s urgent need to fight the epidemic. Of course, the prerequisite is that the Japanese government must "specially handle special matters" to approve and release their vaccines as soon as possible.

According to the information released by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Japanese government has previously signed contracts or reached cooperation intentions with three pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Britain on vaccine supply. Two parties have officially signed the contract: One is to sign a contract with Modena of the United States on October 29. If the company’s vaccine is successfully developed, it will be shipped from Japan through Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., and 40 million doses will be provided in the first half of next year. The third quarter will continue to provide 10 million doses; the second is to sign a contract with the British company AstraZeneca on December 10, if the company's vaccine development is successful, 120 million doses of vaccine will be provided early next year, of which about 30 million will be provided in the first quarter of next year. Japan's JCR Pharmaceuticals is scheduled to produce vaccine stock solutions in China and purchase vaccines from overseas. The intention for cooperation is that Japan reached a basic agreement with Pfizer on July 31. If the company successfully develops a vaccine, Japan will receive 120 million doses (60 million inoculations) before the end of June next year. Continue to negotiate the final contract. In addition, Novavax of the United States and Takeda have reached a collaboration agreement to plan to produce vaccines in Japan.

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech of Germany has begun to implement the first and second phase trials in Japan in October. 160 Japanese people aged 20 to 85 will be vaccinated. It will be submitted to Japan in February next year. 1. The main data of the second phase trial. Pfizer submitted a production and sales license application to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare on December 18. If approved, 120 million doses of vaccine will be provided to Japan in the first half of next year. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare stated that it will review the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine based on the data submitted by Pfizer, and decide whether to approve it as soon as mid-February 2021.

In terms of the vaccination plan, based on the contracts or vaccine supply intentions reached with 3 US and British pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Modena and AstraZeneca, Japan will start vaccination work in the first half of 2021 if the vaccine development is confirmed. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has requested prefectures, counties and municipalities across the country to speed up preparations for new crown vaccination. The Japanese government is considering first vaccinating about 10,000 medical practitioners in late February 2021, vaccinating the remaining about 3 million medical practitioners in mid-March, vaccinating senior citizens in late March, and vaccinating all citizens in April. People with underlying diseases will be vaccinated first.

Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare Norihisa Tamura emphasized that the vaccine to be used will be evaluated and judged on the basis of a practical review of the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. He said that the United States has issued emergency use permits for related vaccines and started vaccination, and Japan will also "as the highest priority subject for the highest priority review." Regarding some of the side effects of vaccines in the United States and Europe, Tamura said that it will collect relevant information from abroad and use it as an important reference data in Japan's vaccine review work. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga stated on a TBS TV program on December 21 that it is very important to confirm the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. Once confirmed, the Prime Minister’s residence will set up a special countermeasure team to coordinate various government departments to start vaccination. Generally, the Japanese government vaccine approval process takes about one year, and individual cases can be used as "exceptions" to simplify procedures. In May of this year, Japan approved the use of a new coronary pneumonia treatment drug in just 3 days.

The Japanese government has sufficient legal and financial preparations for vaccination against US and British pharmaceutical companies. Congress quickly passed the "Vaccination Act (Amendment)" on December 2, allowing the new crown vaccine as a special case of "temporary vaccination". The country will bear the cost of vaccination. Once serious side effects or health damage problems occur, the country will also provide certain compensation. In the 2021 fiscal budget decided by the Japanese cabinet on December 21, 5 trillion yen was included in the preparation of new crown epidemic prevention funds, including 573.6 billion yen in special funds for vaccination.

Japanese society has high expectations for vaccines from American and British pharmaceutical companies, but also has hidden worries. Japanese media are concerned that Pfizer’s vaccine was licensed for use in the United States in only 3 weeks, but the number of infections in Japan is much smaller than that in the United States and Europe. The clinical trials of the vaccine in Japan are too small, with only 160 subjects. It is difficult to truly confirm the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. Ishii Ken, a professor at the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, believes that Pfizer’s vaccines have undergone tens of thousands of clinical trials in different countries, including Asians. So far, no differences in side effects between different races have been found. However, the review authority requires Pay attention to "Haste will fail." Nowadays, Japanese society has both the hope of getting a vaccine right away, and the cautious idea of ​​"Vaccine development is too fast and risky, wait for vaccination". Therefore, getting a vaccine is "both benefits and risks."

Japanese media paid close attention to the serious side effects of Pfizer and Modena vaccines in clinical trials and actual vaccination. They noticed that on December 15th, a woman in the United States suffered a severe allergic reaction after receiving Pfizer vaccine and was hospitalized. ; Two British medical staff experienced severe allergic reactions after vaccination; in the previous clinical trials, the vaccination also experienced a higher proportion of fatigue, headache, fever above 38 degrees and so on. Japanese media believe that after all, it is targeted at hundreds of thousands and millions of healthy people, and serious side effects after vaccination must be carefully considered.

Professor Tetsuya Matsumoto of the International University of Medical Welfare in Japan believes that the vaccine is certainly worth looking forward to, but because of side effects, I hope the Japanese government will not make a hasty decision.

In terms of domestic vaccine research and development, according to the information released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan has five major forces in the development of vaccines from different companies and related institutions. They have also received funding subsidies from the Japanese government, and some have entered the second and third phases of clinical trials. Experiment, but the scale of the test subjects is small, about five to six hundred people.

In people's impression, Japan has a high level of medical technology and a strong ability in medical research and development, but this time, its domestic vaccine research and development process seems to be relatively lagging. The decisive reason is temporarily unknown, but the following objective factors exist. First, Japan's initial epidemic prevention and control effect was good, and the number of people infected was not large. After the epidemic expanded, research on the new crown virus was rapidly deepened, and the treatment of new crown pneumonia was effective, and the treatment of drugs and measures to prevent patients from becoming more severe became abundant. Therefore, Japan's demand for vaccines is not large, and it does not seem to be so urgent. Second, Japan has strict ethics in medical research and development, relatively complete laws dealing with drug side effects and medical accidents, and a more cautious stand on the use of genetic technology to develop vaccines. Third, most of the Japanese medical and pharmaceutical R&D capital is in the hands of pharmaceutical giants. The Japanese, American and European pharmaceutical giants have in-depth exchanges of capital, technology and market interests. Japanese pharmaceutical companies have actually participated in the vaccine development and production of British and American pharmaceutical companies. process. Fourth, judging from some of the policy measures of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan seems to be more inclined to rely on the Western Group of Seven (G7) to respond to the challenges and opportunities arising from the global spread of the epidemic to promote new crown medicine and vaccine diplomacy.

Novel Coronavirus vaccine (NOVEL coronavirus vaccine), a novel irus vaccine (NOVEL Coronavirus vaccine), developed by a team of Researchers from the University of Oxford, has been shown to induce a strong immune response without causing serious side effects.
The vaccine under evaluation is a chimpanzee adenovirus vector vaccine.
The team's clinical trial in the UK involved 1077 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55 who had not been infected with novel Coronavirus.
According to the report, in this phase of the trial, the vaccine showed good safety, no serious side effects, some volunteers after inoculation of mild side effects are also manageable;
The vaccine induces a stronger immune response in two aspects of the body's immune system -- a T-cell response within 14 days of inoculation and an antibody response within 28 days.
Lead author Professor Andrew Pollard, of Oxford University, said the vaccine candidate was designed to induce the immune system to attack viruses and infected cells in two ways - antibodies and T-cell responses.
But Pollard said the team will need further clinical trials to see if the vaccine can effectively protect people from novel Coronavirus infection and how long the protection can last.
The team says they are currently conducting larger clinical trials of the vaccine in the UK, Brazil and South Africa.

Many rumors about novel Coronavirus health are circulating in this anxious world.
One concern is that mosquitoes could feed on an infected person and then transmit the virus to another person.
Not to worry, according to a new study by researchers at Kansas State University.

Who has declared that novel Coronavirus will not spread from mosquito bites.
Who even included this information in its "Rumor Killer" page on COVID-19, stating that "to date there is no information or evidence that novel Coronavirus may be transmitted by mosquitoes."

"Although the WHO has made it clear that mosquitoes do not transmit the virus, our study provides the first hard data to support this theory," said Stephen Higgs of Kansas State University.

The researchers studied three common mosquito species that are widely distributed.
"We demonstrate that the SARS-COV-2 virus cannot replicate in these mosquitoes even under extreme conditions, and therefore cannot be transmitted to humans even in the unlikely event that mosquitoes feed on the virus host," the study said.

The study was conducted at the Biosafety Research Institute in Kansas, a highly secure laboratory facility for infectious disease research.

Germany, Along with France, Italy and the Netherlands, has signed a contract with Astrazeneca to purchase at least 300 million novel Coronavirus vaccines in advance, the Federal Health Ministry said Wednesday.
In the best case scenario, the Novel Coronavirus vaccine could be completed by the end of this year, the Federal Ministry of Health of Germany expects.

Astrazeneca, headquartered in London, Is a global biopharmaceutical company.
Germany's Federal Health Ministry confirmed the news the same day, according to German TV 1 and frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The vaccine ordered by the four countries is AZD1222, which is under development at Oxford University and is produced under licence by Astrazeneca.
The vaccine is currently being tested on a large scale.
German media reported that the above-mentioned four countries have signed orders with Astrazeneca for no less than 300 million doses of vaccines, with a maximum of 400 million doses.
Although the four countries are Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, the vaccine will be available to all EU members and is expected to be distributed according to population size.

Astrazeneca has recently reached similar agreements with the UK and the US respectively, according to The German Business Weekly.

A German TV, citing the German federal health minister jens pan said, many countries in the world has to ensure that their vaccine supply, however, Europe also didn't do that, "by the rapidly coordinated action of several eu member states, eu citizens to all of us to benefit in the outbreak of the crisis".

Germany's Federal Health Ministry said today that the four countries are holding talks with potential vaccine makers to sign a deal to ensure production capacity so that vaccines can be shipped to the European Union in large quantities.
In addition, the video conference of eu Health ministers held on December 12 also agreed that the "vaccine Alliance" will carry out action in coordination with the European Commission.

The EU has recently invested heavily in speeding up vaccine development and ensuring supplies.
On November 11th the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU's multilateral lending arm, announced a €100m investment in BioNTech, a vaccine company based in Mainz, Germany, to boost its vaccine research and production.
According to German media, the European Commission wants to ensure that sufficient quantities of vaccines can be obtained quickly for EU citizens by signing pre-purchase agreements.