Covid-19

Writing for Scientific American, Carolyn Barber spotlights how researchers from MIT are developing cheap, fast and easy to use diagnostics for Covid-19 that can deliver results in minutes. “They are called lateral flow assays, but manifestly they are paper-strip tests that have an antibody embedded on filter paper,” writes Barber. “If a saliva sample has coronavirus present, the antibody will bind that viral antigen, turning the test positive, much like a pregnancy test works.”

New York Times reporter Elaine Glusac spotlights a study by Prof. Arnold Barnett that examines the safety of flying during the Covid-19 pandemic. Barnett found that “on a fully loaded flight, the chance of contracting Covid-19 was one in 4,300. If the middle seat is empty, the risk falls to one in 7,700.”

MIT researchers outfitted a Boston Dynamics robotic dog with contactless vital sign monitoring equipment to help clinicians care for patients with Covid-19 without risking exposure, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington writes that the system “has the potential to not only reduce the risk of exposure for medical personnel, but also drastically reduce use of personal protective equipment.”

Peter Hirst, senior associate dean for executive education at MIT Sloan Executive Education, speaks with Arianne Cohen of Bloomberg about the lessons he’s learned from managing a hybrid team of staff members who worked both remotely and in the office. Hirst advises supervisors to manage by “defining outcomes—coaching people, giving them tools and resources, and really trusting people to get their work done.”

Writing for Fortune, graduate student Nina McMurry examines how public health authorities can allay fears about contact tracing apps. “Public health authorities need to make sure that the public understands what the technology is doing,” McMurry and her co-authors write. “Even if an app is privacy-preserving, the public may not perceive it as such.”

Writing for The New Yorker, Bernard Avishai spotlights Prof. Andrew Lo’s work exploring the need for a revolution in financial engineering to help spur the development of vaccines, and how a vaccine megafund could have assisted in bringing the Covid-19 pandemic under control. “The more I studied this, the more I realized that finance actually plays a huge role in drug development,” says Lo, “in many cases, way too big a role.”

Prof. Arnold Barnett speaks with Newsweek reporter Alexandra Schonfeld about his new research estimating the risk of contracting Covid-19 on an airplane. "I tried to take into account several things, including the fact that air travel travelers—as a group—might be less likely to be carriers of COVID than randomly chosen citizens," says Barnett.

In an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Prof. Sinan Aral writes about the need for a coordinated response to the pandemic across state lines. “When a state reopens while its peer state remains closed, travel spikes from the closed state into the open state,” notes Aral. “Only when both states adopt similar shelter-in-place policies does travel between the states diminish.”

WHDH spotlights MIT startup E25Bio, which is developing a new rapid test to diagnose Covid-19. The test being developed by E25Bio is a paper strip that can deliver test results in 15 minutes, WHDH explains.

Newsweek reporter Meghan Roos writes that a study co-authored by Prof. Victor Chernozhukov finds a nationwide mask mandate in the U.S. could have reduced Covid-19 deaths by 40% among workers who regularly interact with the public. The researchers found “a national mask mandate for workers could have prevented between 17,000 and 55,000 deaths between the start of April and the start of June.”

A new analysis by researchers from MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab and CBS News finds rejection rates of absentee and mail-in ballots ranged from under 1% to nearly 2% during primary elections held during the pandemic.

Prof. James Collins speaks with Molly Wood of Marketplace about his work developing a faster, cheaper and more accurate Covid-19 diagnostic. Collins explains that his research group is “using synthetic biology to create highly sensitive, low-cost diagnostics, some that are now approved for use in clinical diagnostics labs, and now we’re moving towards point-of-care diagnostics, as well as at-home diagnostics.”

Bloomberg reporter Yifan Feng writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers shows women have been disproportionately impacted during Japan’s Covid-19 recession. The researchers found that “female workers fare worse than males and their negative welfare effects are three times as large as those of male workers.”

A new study by Prof. Charles Stewart III “predicts that the outcome of this year’s presidential election — and the problem known as the ‘lost vote,’ in which legitimate ballots go uncounted — could fuel postelection allegations of a rigged election,” reports The New York Times.

A study by MIT researchers encourages neighboring states to more closely coordinate business reopening plans during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports James Hohmann for The Washington Post. The researchers “used data from mobile phones, social media and the census to conclude that residents are worse off when reopening is not coordinated among states and regions.”