Topic description and stories

Virus variants

Vulnerability to different COVID-19 mutations depends on previous infections and vaccination, study suggests

06 Oct 2023

A person’s immune response to variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, depends on their previous exposure – and differences in the...

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COVID-19 variants

Roadmap sets out new global strategy for development of more effective coronavirus vaccines

21 Feb 2023

Plan will accelerate a new approach to coronavirus vaccines research and development, to protect against COVID-19 variants and future pandemic...

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COVID has increased trust in genetics, study finds

26 Jan 2023

A survey of over 2,000 British adults finds that trust in genetics is high and went up significantly during the pandemic. It also finds that there is...

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Medical staff at Addenbrookes hospital

Partnering with local hospitals during COVID-19

13 Dec 2022

From developing intensive care equipment to tackling supplies of PPE and oxygen, here's how a group of Cambridge researchers refocused and partnered...

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Female scientist in laboratory

Set up reserve lab capacity now for faster response to next pandemic, say researchers

28 Sep 2022

Researchers say a ‘human bottleneck’, due to historical cuts in public health funding, delayed the UK’s scale-up of COVID-19 testing in the early...

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Detail of the mosaic of Justinianus I in the Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

Justinianic Plague was nothing like flu and may have hit England before Constantinople

22 Nov 2021

‘Plague sceptics’ are wrong to underestimate the devastating impact that bubonic plague had in the 6th–8th centuries CE, argues a new study based on...

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Track and trace in Sierra Leone

30 Sep 2021

Professor Ian Goodfellow played a crucial role in helping to bring the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone to a close in 2014. His team's work helped...

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Covid-19 vaccine

Study suggests R rate for tracking pandemic should be dropped in favour of ‘nowcasts’

29 Sep 2021

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in 2020, the R rate became well-known shorthand for the reproduction of the disease. Yet a new study suggests it’s...

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Beyond the pandemic: re-design our public health system

09 Dec 2020

COVID-19 has highlighted debilitating flaws in England’s public health systems decades in the making. Carol Brayne and John Clarkson from Cambridge...

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Beyond the pandemic: focus on productivity to make everyone better off

16 Nov 2020

There is no way out of the immediate economic hit of a pandemic, says Professor Diane Coyle, but to heal social fractures, we must focus on giving...

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Unexpected experiences: Stephen J Toope concludes the series with a sense of optimism for the future

22 Oct 2020

"It fills me with enormous gratitude that – at the moment of greatest challenge – our collegiate community rallied and rose to the occasion."

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Unexpected experiences: Catherine Arnold reflects on a curious first year as Master of St Edmund's College

09 Oct 2020

What links two large furry Loch Ness Monsters, key-cards, and donning a gown to eat pot noodles? The answer is the unexpected creativity that...

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