2 killed in shooting at Swiss café, attackers at large

Canadian researchers are developing a DNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and has currently infected nearly 5,00,000 people worldwide and crippled the global economy.

Entos Pharmaceuticals, a health-care biotechnology company headed by a University of Alberta researchers, develop new therapeutic compounds using the company's proprietary drug-delivery platform and has begun manufacturing vaccine candidates against the novel coronavirus.

"Given the urgency of the situation, we can have a lead candidate vaccine within two months. Once we have that it's a race to get it into clinical trials," said John Lewis, CEO of Entos and a Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.

Lewis said in comparison to a traditional vaccine, DNA-based vaccines hold several advantages.

Nucleic acids are introduced directly into the patient's own cells, causing them to make pieces of the virus--tricking the immune system into mounting a response without the full virus actually being present, the researcher said.

According to the company, the approach is recognised as being easier to move into large-scale manufacturing, offers improved vaccine stability and works without needing an infectious agent.

In the current absence of a vaccine for COVID-19, several companies around the world are mounting efforts to begin similar work.

The first clinical trial using a DNA-based vaccine developed by Moderna Inc.in the US on March 13.

Their approach allows for antibodies to be made in the human trial volunteers against a specific protein on the surface of the coronavirus that lets the virus enter human cells.

The hope is that the antibodies will stop the interaction.

Though this approach is designed to be effective against COVID-19 specifically, Lewis said Entos is taking a different tack.

The company plans to use plasmid DNA to amplify the production of key coronavirus surface and structural proteins with each injection, with an eye to the bigger picture.

"Many of the structural proteins in the virus are pretty well conserved across all the coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS," said Lewis.

"We're hoping that if we express more of the structural proteins that are common to most coronaviruses, we can inhibit the current COVID-19, and also potentially protect against all coronaviruses both past and future," Lewis added.

To move the project forward quickly, the company is seeking financial support from both provincial and federal levels of government.

"We have the opportunity to save a lot of lives, and I think it's really upon us and governments to find solutions for that," Lewis said.

London, Jun 19: Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner who once took a bullet for campaigning for girls' education in Pakistan, was over the moon on Friday after completing her degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Britain's prestigious Oxford University.

Malala, 22, who attended Oxford's Lady Margaret Hall college, took to Twitter to share two pictures that show her celebrating the milestone with her family.

"Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now as I completed my Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at Oxford," she said in the tweet, accompanied by two pictures - one showing her sitting with her family in front of a cake that says: 'Happy Graduation Malala', and the other in which she is covered with cake smiling for the camera.

Hard to express my joy and gratitude right now as I completed my Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at Oxford. I don’t know what’s ahead. For now, it will be Netflix, reading and sleep. pic.twitter.com/AUxN55cUAf

— Malala (@Malala) June 19, 2020

In the tweet, the famed human rights activist also revealed her plans for the immediate future - Netflix, reading and sleeping.

"I don't know what's ahead. For now, it will be Netflix, reading and sleep," she wrote.

Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban militants in December 2012 for campaigning for female education in the Swat Valley in northeastern Pakistan.

Severely wounded, she was airlifted from one military hospital in Pakistan to another and later flown to the UK for treatment.

After the attack, the Taliban released a statement saying that they would target Malala again if she survived.

At the age of 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her education advocacy in 2014 when she shared the coveted honour with India's social activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Unable to return to Pakistan after her recovery, she moved to Britain, setting up the Malala Fund and supporting local education advocacy groups with a focus on Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Kenya.

The Taliban, who are against girls' education, have destroyed many schools in Pakistan.

Beijing, Feb 3: The first batch of patients arrived on Monday at a specialised hospital built in just 10 days as part of China's intensive efforts to fight a new virus.

Huoshenshan Hospital and a second facility with 1,500 beds that's due to open this week were built by construction crews who are working around the clock in Wuhan, the city in central China where the outbreak was first detected in December.

The Wuhan treatment centres mark the second time Chinese leaders have responded to a new disease by building specialised hospitals almost overnight. As severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, spread in 2003, a facility in Beijing for patients with that viral disease was constructed in a week.

The first batch of patients arrived at the Huoshenshan Hospital at 10 am on Monday, according to state media. The reports gave no details of the patients' identities or conditions.

The ruling Communist Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, sent 1,400 doctors, nurses and other personnel to staff the Wuhan hospital, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The government said earlier some have experience fighting SARS and other outbreaks.

Authorities have cut most road, rail and air access to Wuhan and surrounding cities, isolating some 50 million people, in efforts to contain the viral outbreak that has sickened more than 17,000 and killed more than 360 people.

The Huoshenshan Hospital was built by a 7,000-member crew of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other specialists, according to the Xinhua News Agency.               Photos in state media showed workers in winter clothing, safety helmets and the surgical-style masks worn by millions of Chinese in an attempt to avoid contracting the virus.

About half of the two-storey, 600,000-square-foot building is isolation wards, according to the government newspaper Yangtze Daily. It has 30 intensive care units.

Doctors can talk with outside experts over a video system that links them to Beijing's PLA General Hospital, according to the Yangtze Daily. It said the system was installed in less than 12 hours by a 20-member "commando team" from Wuhan Telecom Ltd.

The building has specialised ventilation systems and double-sided cabinets that connect patient rooms to hallways and allow hospital staff to deliver supplies without entering the rooms.

The hospital received a donation of "medical robots" from a Chinese company for use in delivering medicines and carrying test samples, according to the Shanghai newspaper The Paper.

In other cities, the government has designated hospitals to handle cases of the new virus.

In Beijing, the Xiaotangshan Hospital built in 2003 for SARS is being renovated by construction workers. The government has yet to say whether it might be used for patients with the new disease.