On this day a year ago, the Alpha variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was designated a variant of concern. The final graphic in the #ChemVsCOVID series with the Royal Society of Chemistry looks at how variants are tracked and what causes the differences between them.
The second part of the #ChemVsCOVID series, produced with the Royal Society of Chemistry, looks at how the structure of the spike protein was determined and how it helped our efforts against the virus.
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.