People with Covid-19 antibodies may still be able to carry and spread virus, UK study finds
Reuters
Experts warned that people who contracted the virus in the first wave of the pandemic in the early months of 2020 may now be vulnerable to catching it again.
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LONDON: People who have had Covid-19 are highly likely to have immunity to it for at least five months but there is evidence that those with antibodies may still be able to carry and spread the virus, a UK study of healthcare workers has found.
Preliminary findings by scientists at Public Health England (PHE) showed that reinfections in people who have Covid-19 antibodies from a past infection are rare - with only 44 cases found among 6,614 previously infected people in the study.
Deep tech adoption to drive reskilling
January 14, 2021
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With automation impacting businesses and hiring, reskilling holds the key. IT industry bodies such as Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) says most of the skills become obsolete within no time.
“The workforce is rapidly evolving. Surveys suggest that about 54 per cent of the world’s workforce will need reskilling and upskilling by 2022. A LinkedIn survey says 42 per cent of the core skills required for jobs would change,” said Lakshmi Mittra, Vice-President and Head of Clover Academy (a part of IT solutions firm Clover Infotech).
She said that 2021 will see organisations focussing on reskilling of staff, keeping in view the emerging gaps.
Here’s a rundown of some bright spots this year and what we could look forward to in 2021.
Off like a shot. Drugs that protect against Covid-19 were developed, tested and rolled out in less than a year a speed unmatched in the history of vaccine science.
While it was not all smooth sailing with childcare challenges, longer working hours, unequal access to technology or fast internet, and psychological stress hundreds of millions of people managed to power through and work remotely for almost a year, keeping banks, schools, government agencies, businesses and even doctors’ offices running. The radical shift is also forcing a global rethink of what work could look like when the pandemic subsides. Flexible hours, fewer commutes or business trips, and splitting time between the home and office each week could become the new normal.
When are you most likely to do your best work? Two economists think they know.
Monash economist Denni Tommasi and University of Granada economist Alessio Gaggero examined five years’ worth of tests taken by STEM students in the UK and came to the conclusion that our brains work best in the middle of the day - if asked to perform abstract, logical or problem-solving tasks. Their research was published in a working paper by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a non-profit research institute based in Germany.
Having studied the results of exams scheduled at 9 am, 1:30 pm and 4:30 pm, Tommasi and Gaggero’s findings suggested the cognitive peak happened in the middle of the day – on average, STEM students performed best in the 1:30 pm exam.
Many parts of Britain, the land of Daleks and the hot water bottle, find themselves in a precarious condition since Sunday. The outbreak of a new strain of the Covid virus imaginatively named VUI-202012/01 by the natives of this island-bananarchy that is ‘75% more contagious’ than plain old Sars-CoV-2 has resulted in a ‘hard lockdown’ being imposed. Which means no stepping out for Christmas shopping for some 16 million Britons, no eating out, no lager louts, and no multi-culti ‘household mixing’.
The last one is the real test, especially for folks like former government adviser on the coronavirus Neil Ferguson, who had to quit in May after admitting that a woman he was in a relationship with visited his home during lockdown. If social distancing is tough for the people that gave us John Donne’s ‘No man is an island entire of itself ’, then physical distancing may be impossible, Brexit notwithstanding.