By now, we’re all familiar with the image of coronavirus. The spikey blob peppers news websites, looms behind reporters during bulletins and frequently punctuates your Twitter doom-scrolling. More recently, the news accompanying this image has taken a positive turn, with promising results from the COVID-19 vaccine trials. It’s the iconic spikes of the coronavirus spikey blob that are a key part of how these vaccines work.
We’re several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and testing is vital to preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus. The latest edition of Periodic Graphics in Chemical and Engineering News looks at how current diagnostics work and what they tell us. Click to view the full graphic on the C&EN site.
Last week, we looked at what coronavirus antibody tests can and can’t tell us. In part 2 of this series of graphics on antibody testing, we look at how the tests work to arrive at their results. As we’ll see, there’s not only one type of antibody test and they can vary in accuracy and the time they take to produce results.
Have you already had COVID-19? Even if you’ve had symptoms consistent with it, you may not know for certain if you didn’t have a test at the time. But newly approved antibody tests may be able to tell you if you had the infection. What exactly can these tests tell us? Part one of this two-parter on antibody tests takes a look.
When you recover from an infection, what stops you from catching it again? The latest edition of Periodic Graphics in C&EN looks at how our immune system responds to infections like coronavirus, how we can test to see if someone’s had an infection, and how vaccines work to prevent them. View the full graphic on the C&EN site.
As coronavirus continues its spread, panic-buying has swept supermarket shelves of hand sanitisers. What’s in these sanitisers and how effective are they in comparison to hand washing? This graphic takes a look.