Research Publications (Food Safety)

Coronaviruses (CoVs) cause severe respiratory, enteric, and systemic infections in a wide range of hosts, including humans and animals. Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), a member of the Coronaviridae family, is the etiological agent of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED), a highly contagious intestinal disease affecting pigs of all ages.

Clinical research is necessary for an effective response to an emerging infectious disease outbreak. However, research efforts are often hastily organised and done using various research tools, with the result that pooling data across studies is challenging.

COVID-19 poses an extraordinary threat to global public health and an effective vaccine could provide a key means of overcoming this crisis. Human challenge studies involve the intentional infection of research participants and can accelerate or improve vaccine development by rapidly providing estimates of vaccine safety and efficacy.

Our data on cases as well as their infected and uninfected close contacts provide key insights into the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2. This analysis shows that isolation and contact tracing reduce the time during which cases are infectious in the community, thereby reducing the R. The overall impact of isolation and contact tracing, however, is uncertain and highly dependent on the number of asymptomatic cases.

Although patients in our study presented with predominately mild, non-specific symptoms, infectiousness before or on the day of symptom onset was substantial. Additionally, the incubation period was often very short and false-negative tests occurred. These results suggest that although the outbreak was controlled, successful long-term and global containment of COVID-19 could be difficult to achieve.

If modern medicine, vaccines, and antibiotics have convinced you that humankind has, by and large, won the war against infectious diseases—and that the COVID-19 pandemic is a freak and unpredictable event—Meera Senthilingam's Outbreaks and epidemics: battling infection from measles to coronavirus could make for a disquieting, if eye-opening, read.

Although now a Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Annelies Wilder-Smith did not seek out a career in emerging infectious diseases. Her career goal had always been tropical and travel medicine, “but emerging infectious diseases came to me”, she tells The Lancet Infectious Diseases. She faced the first severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak when living in Asia in 2003.

US researchers have identified four compounds with in-vitro potency against severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). X-ray crystallography and 3D modelling of molecular docking showed that the compounds targeted the virus' main protease, Mpro, which is essential in host-cell entry and viral replication.

Lockdown measures and school closures affect girls and women differently across the world and may have long-term negative consequences. Talha Burki reports.

Ektorp E. Death threats after a trial on chloroquine for COVID-19.

The publication of a new WHO road map to reduce the burden of neglected tropical diseases highlights the importance of strengthening health systems. Tim Jesudason reports.

Racial violence and racial health inequities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impact on Blacks. Sharrelle Barber reports.

Huang Y, Cheng W, Zhao N, Qu H, Tian J. CT screening for early diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Lancet Infect Dis 2020; published online March 26. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30241-3—In this Correspondence, the affiliation Guangdong Province Hospital for Occupational Disease Prevention and Treatment has been corrected.