Researchers have shown that a variation in the viral genome of Covid-19 improved its ability to infect human cells and helped it become the dominant strain circulating around the world today.

The first of a new family of drugs to stop cancer cells from repairing themselves has been trialled.

Los Angeles County’s first West Nile virus positive mosquito sample of the season was reported Monday, while vector control in Palm Desert also reported mosquito samples testing positive for WNV and St. Louis Encephalitis.

The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could become endemic like HIV, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, warning against any attempt to predict how long it would keep circulating and calling for a "massive effort" to counter it.

Each virus has its unique pattern of spread, and scientists are starting to get a handle on how the novel coronavirus behaves. This understanding is making it possible to rank the risks of different activities from high to low to trivial.

And it's not..No magic bullets either.

Jade DeLucia, 4, of Iowa may be going home today after a bout of the flu landed her in the intensive care unit fighting for her life and her eyesight.

The BlueDot algorithm scours news reports and airline ticketing data to predict the spread of diseases like those linked to the flu outbreak in China.

Ridding the gut of the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori could prevent stomach cancer in people with a family history of the disease. H. pylori infects more than half of all people, and has been linked to peptic ulcers and gastric cancer, which kills more people worldwide than all but two other cancers.

Experts weigh up the best- and worst-case scenarios as the World Health Organization declares a global health emergency.

by Jody Lanard and Peter M. Sandman NOTE FROM IAN: The expert risk communication team of Lanard and Sandman has given me permission to post their very well-considered reply to my question of them just

The authorities in Wuhan on Saturday introduced 14 days’ mandatory quarantine for recovered coronavirus patients, after some discharged patients again tested positive. From Saturday, all patients who had recovered and been discharged had to be sent to designated places for two weeks of quarantine and medical observation, the city’s coronavirus treatment and control command centre said on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

Everybody wants to live as long as possible. We try our best to take care of ourselves — we watch our diet, we stay active, and we throw away the cigarettes. Owing to our gallant efforts, and thanks to advances in science and medicine, human life expectancy across the world doubled in the 20th century. The average human can now expect to live past 70 years old.

As the world watches the outbreak of a novel coronavirus, epidemiologists are watching simulations of that outbreak on their computers to try to predict what might happen next.

The newfound bacteria might shed light on how chlamydia came to infect host organisms, like us.

You’re not just washing viruses down the drain. Soap destroys the coronavirus, a chemistry professor explains.

The early trickle of new coronavirus infections has turned into a steady current. By creating simple simulations, we can see how to slow it down.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author reflects on what it’s like to see his fiction become reality.

An outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) was confirmed on Monday on a farm near the village of Więckowice near Poznań in western Poland, less than 150km (93 miles) from the border with Germany. African swine fever is a highly contagious virus which is fatal to pigs. It is transmitted directly between animals or through infected meat or animal feed and has also been seen as having the potential to transmit to humans. There is an ongoing outbreak in China that has already already wiped out 40% of pigs in the country.