OraSure Technologies has blazed a trail in at-home diagnostic tests. Now, the Pennsylvania-based biotech company is working to produce a quick, over-the-counter coronavirus test that consumers can take in the privacy of their home with results available in minutes. NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports.
Category Archives: Health
Science Podcast: Covid-19 Vaccine Review And Side Effects, Restoring Vision
Staff Writer Meredith Wadman and host Sarah Crespi discuss what to expect from the two messenger RNA–based vaccines against COVID-19 that have recently released encouraging results from their phase III trials and the short-term side effects some recipients might see on the day of injection.
Sarah also talks with researcher Xing Chen, a project co-leader and postdoctoral scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, about using brain stimulation to restore vision. Researchers have known for about 70 years that electrical stimulation at certain points in the brain can lead to the appearance of a phosphene—a spot of light that appears not because there’s light there, but because of some other stimulation, like pressing on the eyeball. If electrical stimulation can make a little light appear, how about many lights? Can we think about phosphenes as pixels and draw a picture for the brain? How about a moving picture?
Medical Reviews: Covid-19 & ‘Cytokine Storm’ (NEJM)
Morning News Podcast: Covid Vaccine Delivery Issues, New ‘Smart’ Cities
We’re getting closer to the vaccine finish line with three promising candidates. Distributing this vaccine will be a challenge everywhere but especially in states that have large rural areas like Alabama where a three-phase plan to get the state vaccinated is being finalized next week.
- Plus, the logic behind the CDC’s new quarantine guidelines.
- And, the new hope for creating smart cities.
Guests: Alabama Public Health state health officer Dr. Scott Harris and Axios’ Sam Baker and Jennifer Kingson.
Health: ‘Travel Bubbles’- Can They Revive Air Travel?
Travel bubbles are under development in some places in an effort to revive air travel, which has plummeted during the pandemic. WSJ explains how reopening the skies without quarantine requirements at both ends of a trip could help reboot the global economy.
Illustration: Crystal Tai
Infographic: Top Covid-19 Vaccines ‘Cost Per Dose’
Covid: China Vaccinates One Million People (Video)
One year since the outbreak emerged in Wuhan, China says it has vaccinated nearly one million people against Covid-19. FRANCE 24 correspondent Charles Pellegrin says while the vaccines have yet to be fully approved for market, authorities have granted permission for their limited use on selected groups of the population.
Medicine: ‘Diabetes’ – Risks & Diagnosis (BMJ Podcast)
In this episode of the JIM Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Richard McCallum speaks with David Cistola of Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso about American Diabetes Month.
Covid-19: ‘When Will The U.S. Get The Vaccine?’
The initial doses of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccines could go out next month, if the FDA grants emergency authorization. There are also three other promising vaccine candidates in the pipeline from AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. The process of distributing the vaccine to the 330 million people living in the U.S., however, could prove a logistical challenge. Here’s a look at how the federal government plans to do it.
Boomers Daily 