According to news.com.au the research team has successfully tested the medication on COVID-19 patients in Australia, and it made the virus completely disappear. The drugs used are already registered in the country, which drastically reduces the hurdles in rolling it out across the population. Next steps for the team are to carry out large scale clinical trials. Professor David Paterson, research director at the centre, wants testing done of the two drugs in 50 Australian hospitals, comparing them against one another and in combination. Prof Paterson said the hope is patients for the trial will be enrolled by the end of the month. Meanwhile, the first ever clinical trial of a vaccine on a human is being carried out today in America, according to the Associated Press. The individual will receive a dose, though not the actual virus, to gauge side effects. It is part of the global race to find a vaccine. And although it could take over 12 months to fully validate one, new technology innovation means interim solutions like shots that could protect people for a shorter period, while a vaccine is being prepared, could be on the horizon....
More than 1 in 5 patients develop heart damage as a result of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, one small study published March 27 in the journal JAMA Cardiology suggested. While some of these patients have a history of heart conditions, others do not. So what's going on?Cardiologists say several scenarios could be unfolding: The heart may struggle to pump blood in the absence of enough oxygen; the virus may directly invade heart cells; or the body, in its attempt to eradicate the virus, may mobilize a storm of immune cells that attack the heart."We know that this is not the only virus that affects the heart," said Dr. Mohammad Madjid, an assistant professor at McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The risk of developing heart attacks, for example, is thought to increase about sixfold when a person is infected with the flu virus, according to a study published in 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine....
