Submission to House of Lords Public Services Committee
In this submission we focus on the relationship between local and national services. The UK response to the pandemic has been characterised – to a greater extent than in some similar countries – by large central initiatives employing private contractors. Certain services, such as testing, had to be very rapidly expanded, and – rightly or wrongly – public sector bodies in the UK had not been funded to put sufficient ‘surge’ capacity in place beforehand. We would draw attention to two linked issues: the merits of a centralised response, and the use of private contractors.

Posted on: 20/07/2020

COVID-19 brain complications found across the globe
Cases of brain disease linked to COVID-19 are occurring across the globe, a new review by NIHR HPRU EZI researchers at the University of Liverpool has shown.

Posted on: 08/07/2020

Launch of the innovative COVID-19 drug testing platform AGILE
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, the University of Liverpool and Southampton Clinical Trials Unit announced this week that they have launched their innovative COVID-19 drug testing platform, AGILE.

Posted on: 08/07/2020

BMJ Best Practice Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)
Nicholas J Beeching, Tom E Fletcher, Robert Fowler
BMJ Best Practice, 

Characterisation of the transcriptome and proteome of SARS-CoV-2 using direct RNA sequencing and tandem mass spectrometry reveals evidence for a cell passage induced in-frame deletion in the spike glycoprotein that removes the furin-like cleavage site
Andrew D. Davidson, Maia Kavanagh Williamson, Sebastian Lewis, Deborah Shoemark, Miles W. Carroll, Kate Heesom, Maria Zambon, Joanna Ellis, Phillip A. Lewis, Julian A. Hiscox,  View ORCID ProfileDavid A. Matthews
bioRxiv, 

Amplicon based MinION sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 and metagenomic characterisation of nasopharyngeal swabs from patients with COVID-19
Shona C Moore, Rebekah Penrice-Randal, Muhannad Alruwaili, Xiaofeng Dong, Steven T Pullan, Daniel Carter, Kevin Bewley, Qin Zhao, Yani Sun, Catherine Hartley, En-min Zhou, Tom Solomon, Michael B. J. Beadsworth, James Cruise, Debby Bogaert, Derrick W T Crook, View ORCID ProfileDavid A Matthews, Andrew D. Davidson, Zana Mahmood, Waleed Aljabr, Julian Druce, Richard T Vipond, Lisa Ng, Laurent Renia, Peter Openshaw, View ORCID ProfileJ Kenneth Baillie, Miles W Carroll, Calum Semple, Lance Turtle, Julian Alexander Hiscox
medRxiv,