USDA is making $1 billion in loan guarantees available “to help rural businesses meet their working capital needs during the coronavirus pandemic,” the department said Thursday. The guarantees apply to loans disbursed through the Business & Industry CARES Act program. In a Notice of Funding Availability made available Thursday but which has yet to be published in the Federal…

In the middle of March, Pfizer chief Albert Bourla beamed into a WebEx video call with the leaders of the American pharmaceutical giant’s vaccine research and manufacturing groups. The two teams had worked late into the night on a robust development plan for Pfizer’s experimental Covid-19 vaccine and told Bourla that they aimed to make it available…

BENGALURU/LONDON (Reuters) – The United States has secured almost a third of the first 1 billion doses planned for AstraZeneca’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as world powers scramble for medicines to get their economies back to work. While not yet proven to be effective against the coronavirus, vaccines are seen…

The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used for a variety of agricultural and public health purposes — from growing disease-resistant crops to, more recently, a diagnostic test for the virus that causes COVID-19. Now a study involving fish that look nearly identical to the endangered Delta smelt finds that CRISPR can be a conservation and…

Scientists are increasingly optimistic that a vaccine can be produced in record time. But getting it manufactured and distributed will pose huge challenges. In a medical research project nearly unrivaled in its ambition and scope, volunteers worldwide are rolling up their sleeves to receive experimental vaccines against the coronavirus — only months after the virus was identified. Companies like…

You can thank plant breeding for nearly everything you eat. From summer corn to winter squash, so much of what we eat is a result of many generations of breeding. But now, we have the ability to improve our food, not in decades, but in just a few years, through gene editing.  Fundamentally, gene editing…

Reports of shortages of personal protective equipment have tormented coronavirus response teams throughout the outbreak. Major mask makers like 3M have been scrambling to meet the increased need to supply more PPE. 3M says it is accelerating production of the N95 mask to achieve a run rate of 2 billion annually over 12 months. Many…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has always warned that “it may be possible” to become infected with coronavirus by touching contaminated surfaces or objects. It just “does not spread easily” in that manner, the agency says, nor by animal-to-human contact or vice versa. “COVID-19 is a new disease and we are still learning about how it…

This isn’t the first time Vicki Dobbins’s town has been forced to shelter in place. Last year, the Marathon Petroleum refinery that looms over her neighborhood near Detroit emitted a pungent gas, causing nausea and dizziness among neighbors and prompting health officials to warn people to stay inside. When a stay-at-home advisory returned in March,…