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COVID-19 antibodies in blood plasma donations appear to drop within just months of symptoms emerging, a study has warned.
The NHS has been using plasma as a treatment for coronavirus infections, and the number of people receiving donations has quadrupled in the last month.

But the health service says it still needs more donations and is partnering with Facebook to enlist new donors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland ahead of a potential second wave of COVID-19.

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NHS appeals for plasma donors to fight COVID

Having plenty of donors could prove even more vital after the warning from a study in Canada that antibody levels in blood plasma donations do not appear to be long-lasting.
With most viruses, antibodies produced by the immune system to fight off the infection can remain in the plasma for months or potentially even years, according to the American Society of Haematology.

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In the case of COVID-19, convalescent plasma treatment infuses people who are suffering with blood plasma from someone who has already recovered in the hope it will help the new patient fight off the disease.

Dr Renee Bazin, author of the study published in the journal Blood, said: “While many clinical trials are underway to better understand whether convalescent plasma is clinically beneficial for treating COVID-19, a key question is at what time point is it most effective to collect donor plasma based on the presence of antibodies that help fight the virus.

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“Based on our findings, antibodies against the new coronavirus are not eternal.”
The small study was carried out in Quebec, Canada, where Dr Bazin works at the Hema-Quebec blood centre.
It drew from 282 plasma donors who had recovered from COVID-19, and followed 15 adults who were diagnosed with the disease and subsequently recovered from it.
These adults donated their plasma between four and nine times after the infection, with the first donation occurring between 33 and 77 days after the onset of symptoms, and the last donation between 66 and 114 days.
Every participant showed a decrease in antibodies at the same time, around 88 days from the first symptoms.

How coronavirus is spreading around the world

The researchers said the decline appeared to be unrelated to the number of times somebody donated blood, but instead correlates with the time elapsed since the body overcame the virus.
“The antibodies disappear rapidly, so people recovering from COVID-19 who want to donate blood plasma should not wait too long once they become eligible to donate,” said Dr Bazin.
She added that the findings suggest clinicians “should ideally use plasma that is collected early on after a donor’s onset of symptoms and check for the presence of antibodies before giving donor plasma to a patient”.
Plasma donations from COVID-19 survivors are being collected at NHS Blood and Transplant’s 23 donor centres all around the UK, and at five pop-up centres.
London, Greater Manchester and Birmingham are priority areas for donations.

Cyber security analysts tasked with investigating Huawei equipment used in the UK’s telecommunications networks discovered a “nationally significant” vulnerability last year.
Investigators at the UK’s Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre (HCSEC) found an issue so severe that it was withheld from the company, according to an oversight report published on Thursday.

Vulnerabilities are usually software design failures which could allow hostile actors (in particular the Chinese state when it comes to Huawei) to conduct a cyber attack. They are not necessarily intentional and can’t be seen as an indication of any hostile intent on the part of the developers themselves.

Huawei: The company and the security risks explained

There is a hypothetical concern that Beijing could purposefully design some kind of deniable flaw in Huawei’s equipment which it would know how to exploit – or that it could have been alerted to a potential attack vector once the issue was reported to Huawei.
The report explicitly states that the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – a part of GCHQ – “does not believe that the defects identified are as a result of Chinese state interference”, and adds that there is no evidence the vulnerabilities were exploited.

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Instead, the agency reported that “poor software engineering and cyber security processes lead to security and quality issues, including vulnerabilities” – and that “the increasing number and severity of vulnerabilities discovered” is of particular concern.

“If an attacker has knowledge of these vulnerabilities and sufficient access to exploit them, they may be able to affect the operation of a UK network, in some cases causing it to cease operating correctly,” the report warns.

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“Other impacts could include being able to access user traffic or reconfiguration of the network elements.”
After the major vulnerability was assessed by the UK’s security services then it was reported to Huawei, in line with the HCSEC’s normal vulnerability disclosure process.
The report adds that HCSEC “continues to reveal serious and systematic defects in Huawei’s software engineering and cyber security competence” – and warns that despite fixing specific issues when directed to do so, the agency has “no confidence that Huawei will effectively maintain components within its products”.

Image: NCSC is part of GCHQ, the UK’s cyber and signals intelligence agency
A spokesperson for Huawei said the report highlighted the company’s “commitment to a process that guarantees openness and transparency, and demonstrates HCSEC has been an effective way to mitigate cyber security risks in the UK”.
They stressed the NCSC’s conclusion that the defects were not believed to be a result of malicious interference from the Chinese state, and that the UK’s networks are not more vulnerable than last year.
“As innovators, we continue significant investment to improve our products. The report acknowledges that while our software transformation process is in its infancy, we have made some progress in improving our software engineering capabilities,” said the spokesperson.
“Huawei has faced the highest level of scrutiny for almost 10 years. This rigorous review sets a precedent for cyber security collaboration between the public and private sectors, and has provided valuable insights for the telecoms sector.”
Although similar vulnerabilities for rival companies which provide networking equipment – whether radio antennas or core switches and gateways – are often discovered, the company argues they do not get the same attention.
“We believe this mechanism can benefit the entire industry and Huawei calls for all vendors to be evaluated against an equally robust benchmark, to improve security standards for everyone,” the spokesperson added.

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Trump: ‘We convinced many countries not to use Huawei’

American restrictions on Huawei (stated to be based on security grounds, although the company argued that it has been unfairly hit by the Trump administration’s trade war) will prohibit US technology companies from providing components – such as computer chips – to the company.
As a result of these restrictions, the British government has ordered that all Huawei equipment must be stripped out of the UK’s telecommunication networks by 2027, following NCSC’s recommendation that it could no longer guarantee the security of Huawei’s equipment if it was to adopt chips from less trusted manufacturers.
The US sanctions were criticised as “arbitrary and pernicious” by Huawei, which has confirmed that 40% of the roles within its enterprise business group in the UK are being made redundant as a result.
Speaking to Sky News last week, Matt Warman MP – who has the infrastructure portfolio under the digital secretary – said he did not expect the US to change its approach towards the company even if a new administration was elected come November.
“If I look across the Atlantic, actually this is an issue where – while the language might be different – there is considerable bipartisan support that is in line with the decision we’re taking,” he said.

Astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole in a cosmic “spider’s web” of gas extending to more than 300 times the size of the Milky Way.
Researchers say it was formed when the universe was less than a billion years old and this is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang.

The finding helps to better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly.
It also supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures, which contain plenty of gas to fuel them, according to the astronomers.

Image: Another black hole found by the European Southern Observatory. Pic: ESO
Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the study, said: “This research was mainly driven by the desire to understand some of the most challenging astronomical objects – supermassive black holes in the early universe.

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“These are extreme systems and to date we have had no good explanation for their existence.”

The observations were made by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT).

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Mr Mignoli added: “The cosmic web filaments are like spider’s web threads.
“The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas – available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole – can flow along the filaments.”
According to the study, published in the Astronomy and Astrophysics journal, the light from this large web-like structure, with its black hole of one billion solar masses, has travelled to Earth from a time when the universe was only 900 million years old.

Image: The Very Large Telescope, or VLT. Pic: ESO
Referring to supermassive black holes, co-author Roberto Gilli, also an astronomer at INAF in Bologna, said: “Our work has placed an important piece in the largely incomplete puzzle that is the formation and growth of such extreme, yet relatively abundant, objects so quickly after the Big Bang.”
It is thought the first black holes, believed to have formed from the collapse of the first stars, must have grown very fast to reach masses of a billion suns within the first 900 million years of the universe’s life.
Astronomers have struggled to explain how sufficiently large amounts of “black hole fuel” could have been available to enable these objects to grow to such enormous sizes in such a short time.
However, they suggest the new-found structure offers a likely explanation – the web-like structure and the galaxies within it contain enough gas to provide the fuel that the central black hole needs to quickly become a supermassive giant.

Google has unveiled its Pixel 5 smartphone – a 5G-compatible flagship device with a more affordable price tag – and an updated Nest smart speaker, alongside new services including Google TV.
Although the Pixel 5 had been announced earlier this year when Google unveiled the low-cost Pixel 4a phone, consumers are now being given their first look at the device and its specs.

The new handset’s stand-out feature isn’t its 6″ screen or 90Hz OLED display, but its significantly reduced price tag – coming in at £599 ($699), well below the £669 ($799) that the last generation Pixel 4 retailed at.

Image: The Pixel 4a was released earlier this year
Affordability seems to have been the key factor for Google when developing the new device, with 5G connectivity allowing users to connect to services off of the device, rather than rely on the impressive hardware itself outperforming market competition such as Apple’s iPhone – the latest of which is set to be unveiled next month.
Access to Google services has always been the Pixel’s main selling point, and a principal advertising image for the new phone shows it being used with a controller for Google Stadia – the company’s games streaming platform.

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A three-month subscription to Stadia Pro is bundled with the Pixel 5, as are subscriptions to some of the company’s other digital services.

“The global economic crisis will suppress the demand for smartphones for at least the next 12 months,” said Marina Koytcheva of analyst firm CCS Insight.

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“Google’s decision to address the weak market with a more affordable device is smart and timely,” Ms Koytcheva added at the time of the 4a launch, although the analysis holds up considering the Pixel 5’s price.
That said, Google had begun developing the affordable Pixel 5 before the coronavirus pandemic had struck – and it is mostly fortuitous that it could meet a consumer need for reduced spending.

Image: Google Nest Audio has been redesigned to improve sound quality
Google also announced a replacement for its Home smart speaker with the new Nest Audio, a recycled-fabric covered WiFi speaker which has been re-engineered to improve its sound quality.
It functions like any other smart speaker might be expected to, responding to voice commands to play music or control smart home devices – although Google’s speakers have significantly less market share than Amazon’s standard Echo.