Researchers at Hackensack Meridian Health, New Jersey's largest and most comprehensive health network, have utilized its statewide observational database of more than 5,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients to show that a drug normally used in rheumatoid arthritis and cancer treatments, tocilizumab, improves hospital survival in critically-ill patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).

A novel receptor protein that binds to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and prevents it from entering cells may hold promise for treating COVID-19 and other coronavirus-related diseases, according to research published online Aug. 4 in the journal SCIENCE.

As scientists race to find treatments for COVID-19, many are focused on a specific protein called angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE2, which is found on various cell surfaces throughout the human body.

A preliminary analysis of an ongoing study of more than 300 COVID-19 patients treated with convalescent plasma therapy at Houston Methodist suggests the treatment is safe and effective. The results, which appear now in The American Journal of Pathology, represents one of the first peer-reviewed publications in the country assessing efficacy of convalescent plasma.

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside, have used machine learning to identify hundreds of new potential drugs that could help treat COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2.

"There is an urgent need to identify effective drugs that treat or prevent COVID-19," said Anandasankar Ray, a professor of molecular, cell, and systems biology who led the research.

As the world continues to closely monitor the newest coronavirus outbreak, the government of South Korea has been able to keep the disease under control without paralyzing the national health and economic systems. In a new research article published in The American Review of Public Administration, University of Colorado Denver researcher Jongeun You reviewed South Korea's public health policy to learn how the country managed coronavirus from January through April 2020.

Contrary to what has been generally assumed so far, a severe course of COVID-19 does not solely result in a strong immune reaction - rather, the immune response is caught in a continuous loop of activation and inhibition. Experts from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the University of Bonn, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), along with colleagues from a nationwide research network, present these findings in the scientific journal Cell.

The authors say that health-care systems should ensure adequate availability of PPE and develop additional strategies to protect health-care workers from COVID-19, particularly those from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds Frontline healthcare workers may have substantially higher risk of reporting a positive test for COVID-19 than people from the general population, according to an observational study of almost 100,000 healthcare workers in the UK and USA published today in The Lancet Public Health journal.