A pioneering UK study shows how the highly transmissible Delta strain spreads from person to person, even among vaccinated people, and details how rapidly vaccine immunity wanes.
Roger Highfield is the Science Director at the Science Museum Group, a member of the UK's Medical Research Council and a visiting professor at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, and Department of Chemistry, UCL. He studied Chemistry at the University of Oxford and was the first person to bounce a neutron off a soap bubble. Roger was the Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph for two decades, and the Editor of New Scientist between 2008 and 2011. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, most recently Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work, and has had thousands of articles published in newspapers and magazines.
Delta infections are surging in highly vaccinated countries, like the UK, that once seemed to have made progress in curbing COVID-19. Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Professor Ravindra “Ravi” Gupta of the University of Cambridge, about why Delta is the most concerning variant seen so far.
The world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer is the Serum Institute of India. Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Umesh Shaligram, Executive Director, about its vast COVID-19 vaccination effort.
Insights into the impact of the pandemic on the nation’s mental health have come from a new online study to weigh up cognitive skills, says Roger Highfield, Science Director.
Roger Highfield, Science Director, discusses two new COVID-19 vaccines under development, one of which is manufactured by cells from the fall armyworm moth, with Dr Ian Gray, Medical Director of Sanofi UK and Ireland.
How do you ensure that ‘COVID-19 jabs are in arms, not fridges’? Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Dr Emily Lawson, England’s vaccine deployment lead in the National Health Service.
How do you know which vaccine research to back when a pandemic starts? Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to Kate Bingham, former chair of the UK Government’s Vaccine Taskforce.
A traditional kind of vaccine is being readied for the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Roger Highfield, Science Director, finds out about Europe’s first ‘inactivated virus’ vaccine.
Roger Highfield, Science Director, talks to the scientist behind the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine that requires only a single dose.
For the first time, scientists can see a pandemic evolve in real time at the genetic level, revealing ‘variants of concern’ while guarding for large-scale genetic changes in COVID-19 that might occur by a process called recombination.
Mutant versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have set off alarms worldwide. Science Director Roger Highfield talks to one of the laboratories racing to find out what these variants mean for COVID-19 transmissibility and virulence, along with the development of drugs and vaccines.
The pandemic has led to the steepest slowdown in human activity since the Second World War. Science Director, Roger Highfield, asks what this means for climate change.