CORONAVIRUS NEWS

Matt Hancock, the Secretary for Health and Social Care, has stated that during the Covid-19 (SARS-Cov-2) pandemic ‘good quality testing can help provide us with certainty’ and is ‘a big part of how we’re going to defeat this disease’.

Trials have begun of a system that will use machine learning to help predict the upcoming demand for intensive care (ICU) beds and ventilators needed to treat patients with COVID-19 at individual hospitals and across regions in England.

Thousands of patients could benefit from potential treatments for COVID-19 that will be fast-tracked through a new national clinical trial, the Health and Care Secretary has announced.

New figures on 'Deaths involving COVID19 by local area and deprivation', show that the Coronavirus pandemic has hit the poorest hardest.

New supplementary guidance from the RCP will help clinicians manage patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC - which includes vegetative state (VS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) but not short-term coma) who have had a tracheostomy.

20,000 households in England are being contacted to take part in the first wave of a major new government study to track coronavirus (COVID-19) in the general population.

Surgical associations whose members work close to the face have issued further advice for their members in response to Public Health England (PHE) guidance changes that allow re-use of surgical masks.

A collaborative study led by the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) with the Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity (Doherty Institute), a joint venture of the University of Melbourne and Royal Melbourne Hospital, has shown that an anti-parasitic drug already available around the world kills the virus within 48 hours.

A drive-through coronavirus testing facility has opened at Edinburgh Airport as part of the Government’s UK-wide drive to increase testing for thousands more NHS and other key workers.

Abbott has announced the launch of its third COVID-19 test, a lab-based serology blood test for the detection of the antibody, IgG, that identifies if a person has had the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

NICE has published new guidelines on the management of patients with severe asthma, pneumonia, rheumatological autoimmune, inflammatory and metabolic bone disorders and the management of COVID-19 symptoms in the community.

The Government is calling on pharmaceutical giants and diagnostic companies to join forces on plans to roll out millions of coronavirus (COVID-19) tests.

Twenty of Althea’s specialist biomed engineers are playing a vital role at the newly built Nightingale NHS Hospital in London to build, test and commission thousands of lifesaving medical equipment ready for the first patients to be treated.

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, ​Beckman Coulter​ has announced that it is developing assays to identify IgM and IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.

The new Nightingale Hospital set to open at Harrogate Convention Centre to support the increasing number of patients with Covid-19, will be underpinned a leading Patient Administration Systems (PAS), designed specifically for the NHS.

As the UK faces a shortage of protective equipment in hospitals due to the ongoing crisis surrounding COVID-19, IBM staff with 3D printers are turning their devices and skills to helping alleviate the shortage by producing them themselves after an internal rallying call for expertise and supplies.

Amid the potential acute shortages of ventilators at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have shown in a new simulation study the potential for ventilators to be manipulated to ventilate two patients independently.

​Managed service and maintenance provider Althea is urging UK hospitals who have disused ventilation equipment to contact them immediately.

The use of robotics and artificial intelligence has been a key feature in the fight against Coronavirus in China, where the technology has been used for infection control, logistical tasks and support in the treatment of patients. Now a British-based organisation, MedAssyst, is bringing the technology to the UK.

The world’s largest randomised clinical trial of potential coronavirus treatments is underway in the UK as part of the race to find a treatment.