Susan Mayor

Organisations representing health professionals have cautioned over the need to minimise the risk of transmitting SARS-CoV-2, after the self isolation period in England following infection was cut from seven to five days. From 17 January people in England can stop isolating at the start of the sixth day after first testing positive for covid-19, provided that they have two negative lateral flow tests on days 5 and 6 and do not have a raised temperature.

More than three quarters of Wuhan residents who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies had experienced no covid-19 symptoms and just under half developed long lasting neutralising antibodies, show results from the first long term seroprevalence study from the epicentre of the outbreak in China.1 Researchers tested 9542 people from 3556 randomly selected households across the 13 districts of Wuhan, which has a total population of 11 million.

As the transition period for the UK's departure from the EU ended on Dec 31, 2020, the two parties agreed measures to minimise disruption to the supply of medicines for patients with cancer in the UK and enable continued participation in international clinical trials and research in the short term, but the long-term future impact of Brexit on cancer care and research remains unclear.