Each workday morning in March, Noe Mercado drove through the desolate streets of Boston to a tall glass building on Blackfan Circle, in the heart of the city’s biotech hub. Most residents had gone into hiding from the coronavirus, but Mr. Mercado had an essential job: searching for a vaccine against this new, devastating pathogen.

Parking in the underground lot, he put on a mask and rode the empty elevator to the tenth floor, joining a skeleton crew at the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Day after day, Mr. Mercado sat at his lab bench, searching for signs of the virus in nasal swabs taken from dozens of monkeys.

Continue reading “Inside Johnson & Johnson’s Nonstop Hunt for a Coronavirus Vaccine” →

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers found preliminary evidence suggesting that people’s blood type might be an important risk factor — both for being infected by the virus and for falling dangerously ill.

But over the past few months, after looking at thousands of additional patients with Covid-19, scientists are reporting a much weaker link to blood type.

Two studies — one at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the other at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York — did not find that Type A blood increases the odds that people will be infected with Covid-19.

Continue reading “Covid-19 Risk Doesn’t Depend (Much) on Blood Type, New Studies Find” →

A stretch of DNA linked to Covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Scientists don’t yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history.

“This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years ago is still having an impact today,” said Joshua Akey, a geneticist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study.

Continue reading “DNA Inherited From Neanderthals May Increase Risk of Covid-19” →