News Room

The mRNA-based coronavirus vaccine developed by Moderna and vetted in clinical trials at the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System is based on the same technology used by Pfizer to develop its vaccine candidate, but would not have the same requirement for storage at ultra-cold temperatures. Pfizer and Moderna are the first companies to release partial results from Phase 3 clinical trials in the race to develop a vaccine against the deadly SARS-CoV-3 virus that causes COVID-19.

The U.S. recorded more than 1 million cases of COVID-19 in the last seven days, Johns Hopkins University data shows, which is more than any other week since the pandemic began. There are 80,000 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19 and over 15,000 of these individuals are currently in intensive care units (ICUs) with nearly 5,000 on ventilators. These numbers are prodigious and make it clear to experts in the medical field that catastrophe in the health care world is not imminent — it has arrived.

Due to the extremely high virus activity level in Wisconsin, experts say there's no completely safe way to celebrate Thanksgiving with people who live outside your home. "Whenever you have so many people that are carrying the virus, then even small gatherings are a risk," Dr. Oguz Alagoz, who models infectious diseases at UW-Madison, said. That risk exists even at gatherings of close family if they aren't part of the same household. "We have so many people that are already carrying this virus, so it's very likely that one of your loved ones, knowingly or unknowingly, could transmit," he said.

It turns out that we are flushing valuable information about our COVID-19 status down the toilet, and the key to tracing new cases requires taking a closer look in our sewers. These insights come from a recent study by Oded Berman, a professor of Operations Management and Statistics at the Rotman School of Management.

What to do about Covid? With nearly 60 million cases and 1.4 million deaths worldwide as of the end of November 2020, there are still no consistently effective treatments or approved vaccines yet (though large-scale vaccine trials have already produced promising results). Social distancing, mask wearing, and infection control practices can reduce the rate of spread somewhat, but as long as infectious individuals circulate amongst susceptible persons, continued spread is inevitable, given that most populations have not built immunity against SARS-CoV-2 to any meaningful extent.