coronavirus tagged posts

Medical valves manufactured with portable 3D printers are saving the lives of coronavirus victims at a hospital located in what is considered Italy’s Ground Zero for the deadly viral infection.

When the founder of Issanova, a startup 3D printing firm with a staff of 14 learned that a local hospital was running short of critical breathing devices used to help hospital patients suffering from the deadly virus, he sprang into action. He consulted with a fellow engineering expert and the two raced to the desperate hospital located in the small town of Chiari. There, they examined the medical device, called a Venturi valve.

That was on Friday the 13th...

Infectious disease researchers at The University of Texas at Austin studying the novel coronavirus were able to identify how quickly the virus can spread, a factor that may help public health officials in their efforts at containment. They found that time between cases in a chain of transmission is less than a week and that more than 10% of patients are infected by somebody who has the virus but does not yet have symptoms.

In the paper in press with the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, a team of scientists from the United States, France, China and Hong Kong were able to calculate what’s called the serial interval of the virus...

Work on similar viruses is giving researchers clues to develop drugs against the disease. As the new coronavirus makes its way around the world, doctors and researchers are searching for drugs to treat the ill and stop the spread of the disease, which has already killed more than 3,800 people since its introduction in Wuhan, China, in December.

The culprit virus is in the same family as the coronaviruses that caused two other outbreaks, severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome...

Engineers with the University of Cincinnati have created a tiny portable lab that plugs into your phone, connecting it automatically to a doctor’s office through a custom app UC developed. The lab the size of a credit card can diagnose infectious diseases such as coronavirus, malaria, HIV or Lyme disease or countless other health conditions like depression and anxiety.

The patient simply puts a single-use plastic lab chip into his or her mouth then plugs that into a slot in the box to test the saliva.

The ...