Publication: MedRxiV

Martin Wiegand, Sarah L. Cowan, Claire S. Waddington, David J. Halsall,  Victoria L. Keevil,  Brian D. M. Tom, Vince Taylor,  Effrossyni Gkrania-Klotsas, Jacobus Preller,  Robert J. B. Goudie

18 February 2021

Summary

Researchers propose a prognostic dynamic risk stratification for 48-hour in-hospital mortality in patients with COVID-19, using demographics and routinely-collected observations and laboratory tests: age, Clinical Frailty Scale score, heart rate, respiratory rate

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Publication: ELife

William L Hamilton, Dinesh Aggarwal, Charlotte Houldcroft, Ben Warne, Luke Meredith, Myra Hosmillo, Aminu Jahun,  Laura Caller, Sarah Caddy, Fahad Khokhar, Anna Yakovleva, Grant Hall, Theresa Feltwell, Malte Pinckert, Iliana Georgana, Yasmin Chaudhry, Nicholas Brown, Ewan Harrison,  Gordon Dougan, Sharon Peacock,   Ian Goodfellow,  M. Estee Torok

16 February 2021

Summary:

Approximately 70% of residents in the genomic analysis were admitted to hospital during the study period, providing extensive opportunities for transmission between care homes and hospitals. Limiting viral transmission between care home residents should be a key target for infection control to reduce COVID-19 mortality in this population

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Publication: MedRxiV

Christopher J. R. Illingworth, ProfileWilliam L. Hamilton,  ProfileChris Jackson, Ashley Popay, Luke Meredith, Charlotte J. Houldcroft, Myra Hosmillo, Aminu Jahun, Matthew Routledge, Ben Warne, Laura Caller, Sarah Caddy, Anna Yakovleva, Grant Hall, Fahad A. Khokhar, Theresa Feltwell, Malte L. Pinckert, Iliana Georgana, Yasmin Chaudhry, Martin Curran, Surendra Parmar, Dominic Sparkes, Lucy Rivett, Nick K. Jones, Sushmita Sridhar, Sally Forrest, Tom Dymond, Kayleigh Grainger, Chris Workman, Effrossyni Gkrania-Klotsas, Nicholas M. Brown, Michael P. Weekes, Stephen Baker, Sharon J. Peacock, Theodore Gouliouris, Ian Goodfellow, Daniela de Angelis, M. Estée Török

27 October 2020

Summary:

A new software tool will help doctors identify where cases of COVID-19 were caused by transmission within a hospital, helping them to prevent further spread of the disease.

The new software package, A2B-Covid, combines knowledge about infection dynamics, data describing the movements of individuals, and genome sequence data to assess whether or not coronavirus has been transmitted between people in the hospital environment.

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Publication: Cell Reports Medicine

Petra Mlcochova, Dami Collier, Allyson Ritchie, Sonny M. Assennato, Myra Hosmillo, Neha Goel, Bo Meng, Krishna Chatterjee, Vivien Mendoza, Nigel Temperton, Leo Kiss, Leo C. James, Katarzyna A. Ciazynska, Xiaoli Xiong, John AG. Briggs, James A. Nathan, Federica Mescia, Laura Bergamaschi, Hongyi Zhang, Petros Barmpounakis, Nikos Demeris, Richard Skells, Paul A. Lyons, John Bradley, Steven Baker, Jean Pierre Allain, Kenneth GC. Smith, Rachel Bousfield, Michael Wilson, Dominic Sparkes, Glenn Amoroso, Effrosyni Gkrania-Klotsas, Susie Hardwick, Adrian Boyle, Ian Goodfellow, Ravindra K. Gupta 

1 September 2020

Summary

Testing patients for COVID-19 as soon as they arrive at hospital is essential to obtain a diagnosis and to make sure they receive the correct treatment as soon as possible.

In a recent Cambridge study, the use of the SAMBA II test reduced the amount of time patients spent on holding wards. Now Cambridge researchers wanted to go further to create a ‘gold-standard’ method of testing.

The most common form of testing is taking a swab of the nose and throat (known as PCR) to see if the virus is present. However, it can take as long as 14 days for an individual to show symptoms of COVID-19, by which time the virus may have moved from the nose and throat and into the lungs and other tissues and organs, making it harder to detect via a swab test. Another way to detect the virus is looking for antibodies (from blood samples) in individuals.

Cambridge researchers combined the two tests – PCR and the antibody test – to help identify who may have the virus. They found combining both tests was more effective to identify patients who had Covid than those who had just one of the tests. Read the full news story.

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