The Coronavirus Outbreak

Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between

Pandemic highlights for the past two weeks

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between.

A detailed analysis suggests that COVID deaths and other pandemic-related mortality may have been significantly undercounted in the rural South and West

At a mass vaccination site in New Jersey, people got a shot of hope

Standard treatments such as steroids, as well as illnesses such as diabetes, make the fungal infection worse

Allegations that COVID escaped from a Chinese lab make it harder for nations to collaborate on ending the pandemic—and fuel online bullying—some scientists say

Key questions remain about how quickly B.1.617 variants can spread, their potential to evade immunity and how they might affect the course of the pandemic

What is unprecedented is not just the speed and focus with which the community responded to the pandemic but also the singular willingness of scientists all over the world to share new ideas and data immediately and transparently

Pandemic highlights for the past two weeks

A pediatric infectious disease expert answers questions about whether the vaccine is safe and why children need it

Preliminary results from a trial of more than 600 people are the first to show the benefits of combining different vaccines