New research has poured cold water on the theory that the Covid-19 outbreak in Washington state – the country’s first – was triggered by the very first confirmed case of the infection in the country. Instead, it suggests the person who ignited the first chain of sustained transmission in the United States probably returned to
The groundbreaking American writer and tireless activist for gay rights and a national effort to tackle the HIV/Aids crisis, Larry Kramer, has died in New York. Kramer, 84, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan, the New York Times reported, citing his husband, David Webster, who said Kramer died of pneumonia. Kramer was a founder of
Reflecting on a career spanning more than 40 years in nursing and midwifery, Burnet Institute Research Nurse, Kate Allardice smiles. “I am forever thankful that’s what I chose to do with my life,” she says. It’s a hugely varied professional journey that spans the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre in the days when female nurses (but
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has produced the fear and disorder inevitably provoked by emerging pathogens. As such, it should also inspire consideration of our experience with HIV over the past 40 years. As with HIV, the road to reducing infections with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19), and
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The following is a brief roundup of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. New coronavirus antibody test highly accurate A new antibody test is highly accurate at determining whether people have been infected with
Overstretched health systems, lockdowns, loss of livelihoods and fewer employment opportunities could increase unprotected sex, sexual violence and exploitation, transactional sex and sex work, leading to an increase in new HIV infections GENEVA, 6 May 2020-Despite the global progress made in HIV prevention, with new HIV infections falling by 40% since the peak in 1997,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada is not drawing “firm conclusions” on allegations that the novel coronavirus – which has now caused devastation worldwide – came from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan. … In a previous interview with Global News, Jeffrey Joy, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty
Armies of researchers around the world are working overtime to develop a vaccine for COVID-19. While it will take some time until one is available to stop the spread of the deadly and highly contagious virus, it seems as though Canadians are divided by the idea of how it could be administered. … Jeffrey Joy,
This year, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. In his virtual presentation, Denton Callander, PhD, of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, explained how community-level HIV viremia was associated with decreasing HIV incidence in a real-world example of
They can be heard at 7 p.m. every evening: ringing bells, clanging pots, honking horns, and blaring sirens sounding out in support of health-care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the workers on the frontlines are researchers at Providence Health Care who are trying to understand the virus and how to control and cure it.
More than a dozen “rapid response” research projects have been launched by Genome B.C. aimed at improving COVID-19 virus and antibody detection, and accelerating the development of treatments and vaccines. Zabrina Brumme and Christopher Lowe are heading a collaboration aimed at creating a test that will not only reveal whether or not the virus is
Project Leaders: Chanson Brumme Institutions: University of British Columbia (UBC) Budget: $76500 Competition: Rapid Response Funding for COVID-19 Research Projects Genome Centre(s): Genome British Columbia Fiscal Year: 2020 Status: Active This project will create a simple open-source software package that will help analyze viral genomic data from the COVID-19 pandemic. This tool will be created
Project Leaders: Christopher Lowe, Zabrina Brumme Institutions: Simon Fraser University (SFU) Budget: $101000 Competition: Rapid Response Funding for COVID-19 Research Projects Genome Centre(s): Genome British Columbia Fiscal Year: 2020 Status: Active There is an urgent need to quickly and accurately identify cases of COVID-19 as people with the illness need to quarantine themselves in order
World AIDS Day arrives each December 1 with a sense of sadness, but there was cause to celebrate in British Columbia last December. That was when provincial Health Minister Adrian Dix officially declared that A IDS was no longer an epidemic in British Columbia, but an endemic concern. Accompanying Dix that day at the opening
One of the most important HIV conferences of the year, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2020) took place in the second week of March, just as many people’s attention was engulfed by the new coronavirus. You might have missed some of the key developments in HIV prevention presented at the meeting: The
SEATTLE, Washington – Though there have been multiple biomedical advances to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS in the last decade, these innovations have not been accessible to everyone. Barriers remain in the form of stigma, lack of supportive policy, a dearth of robust health systems and even more challenges unique to each country. Here
The federal government has provided researchers at the University of British Columbia with a total of $5.1 million in funding towards research on detecting, managing, and reducing the transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus. UBC researchers were initially provided with $2.8 million on March 6, but that has since been topped off with an additional $2.3
VANCOUVER — Multiple research teams out of a B.C. university are getting millions of dollars in funding from the federal government to propel their novel coronavirus research. The University of British Columbia announced Tuesday that five of its research teams are collectively getting $2.3 million from the federal government to continue their work on detecting,
Here’s the story of one Canadian doctor who has spent decades helping the medical world turn the tide on the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In 1981, AIDS was first recognized as a new disease. Caused by the HIV virus, it first presented as a strange kind of pneumonia. Doctors soon realized that although the pneumonia was treatable,
This year, the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) was held in a virtual format due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. For the first in our video coverage series for 2020’s meeting, we’re revisiting a feature from 10 years ago on the future of HIV research, which is not so different from the
