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Will COVID-19 vaccines work on the new coronavirus variant?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said data coming from Britain indicates the vaccines still will block the virus. But the U.S. also will do tests to be sure.

Viruses often undergo small changes as they reproduce and move through a population. In fact, the slight modifications are how scientists track the spread of a virus from one place to another.

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Spain to keep registry of people who refuse Covid vaccine

“What will be done is a registry, which will be shared with our European partners… of those people who have been offered it and have simply rejected it,” he said.

“It is not a document which will be made public and it will be done with the utmost respect for data protection,” he added, noting that employers or members of the general public would not have access to it.

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What skills are Indians learning for 2021

To land lucrative jobs and fit in the drastically changing work environment, 26% of the total students enrolled for programming with Python training, 23% for digital marketing, and 22% students focussed on learning web development. Ethical hacking and machine learning training were also popular among students with 15% and 14% enrolments respectively

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Scientists develop new gene therapy for deafness

“Children inheriting the defective gene from both parents are born with normal hearing, but they gradually lose their hearing during childhood. The mutation causes mislocalization of cell nuclei in the hair cells inside the cochlea of the inner ear, which serve as soundwave receptors and are essential for hearing. This defect leads to the degeneration and eventual death of hair cells,” said Professor Karen Avraham of the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience.

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Studies find having Covid-19 may protect against reinfection

Researchers found that people with antibodies from natural infections were “at much lower risk … on the order of the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine,” of getting the virus again, said Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
“We don’t know how long-lasting this immunity is,”said Joshua Wolf, an infectious disease specialist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis added. Cases of people getting Covid-19 more than once have been confirmed, so “people still need to protect themselves and others by preventing reinfection.” he said.

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Families of Italian Covid-19 victims seek $122 million from government

The lawsuit is being brought by members of a committee called “Noi Denunceremo” (we will go to court), set up in April to represent the relatives of people who died in Bergamo, one of Lombardy’s worst-affected cities.

The civil lawsuit, which the plaintiffs presented to a Rome court, is against Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Health Minister Roberto Speranza and the governor of the northerly Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana.

Italy, the first Western country hit by the coronavirus, has reported seen more than 70,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the outbreak emerged in February, the highest toll in Europe and the fifth-highest in the world. The hardest-hit region is Lombardy, where the first COVID-19 patient was detected on Feb. 20.

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U.S. vaccine rollout’s next challenge: Verifying who is ‘essential’

The vaccination campaign under way is now focused on hospital staff and nursing homes, tightly controlled environments where verification is relatively simple. But beginning in January or February, Americans employed in a range of industries will be eligible for inoculation, provided they are essential frontline workers.
The criteria to qualify as an essential, frontline worker varies from state to state. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that roughly 30 million essential workers will be next in line for a shot. An additional 57 million essential workers will be vaccinated later.

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COVID-19 immunity lasts at least 8 months hope for longevity of vaccinations Study

While earlier studies have shown that antibodies against the coronavirus wane after the first few months of infection, raising concerns that people may lose immunity quickly, the new research, published in the journal Science Immunology, puts these concerns to rest.

The scientists believe the findings give hope to the efficacy of any vaccine against the virus, and also explains why there have been very few examples of genuine reinfection across the millions of those who have tested positive for the virus globally.

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