The study, based on data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that stress, anxiety, and depression are the factors that most weaken psychological resilience.

Researchers at Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered how a SARS-CoV-2 protein called ORF8 is responsible for hijacking the immune system’s macrophages and causing this dangerous cycle. The work, published in Science Advances, also shows that blocking ORF8 reduces lung inflammation and damage in mice infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The research could have an impact on pandemic prevention and the development of strategies against various coronaviruses.

When public health researchers want to know whether diseases such as COVID-19 or polio are circulating in a community, they can look for genetic evidence in wastewater.

Entomologist Dana Price wondered whether the same principle could be applied to mosquitoes. The question led to an unconventional experiment.

“What we did, colloquially, was build a mosquito toilet,” said Price, an associate professor at the Center for Vector Biology, Department of Entomology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and a lead author of a study published in Microbiology Spectrum.

New study finds that widespread underreporting of Covid-19 deaths cannot be explained simply by differences in countries’ ability to count and record deaths. Across 134 countries and territories, an estimated 45%–55% of governments misreported Covid mortality, with underreporting far more common than overreporting. The study provides comparable country-level data of the extent of misinformation for researchers and policymakers. The findings point to a broader lesson beyond the pandemic: strong institutions and an informed public can play an important role in protecting the reliability of official information.