A volcano on the northern tip of the main island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines that had been dormant for decades erupted Friday after showing signs of activity in late December, the New York Times reports.
Why it matters: La Soufrière's eruption came hours after the Caribbean country evacuated around 20,000 people from near the volcano. There were no immediate reports of casualties, according to AP.
Cutting-edge, machine-learning techniques are increasingly being adapted and applied to biological data, including for COVID-19.
The big picture: Discovering and developing a new drug typically takes more than a decade and costs on average close to $1 billion, making it difficult to build a cache of pharmaceuticals to fight future pandemics or stop intractable diseases.
Antiviral drugs can bea key pandemic-fighting tool, but so far there's only one approved in the U.S. for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Why it matters: Because some people won't get vaccinated, and because there will likely be new variants of the virus, we'll need effective treatments — including antivirals, former FDA commissioners Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan wrote earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal.
New Zealand has announced a temporary entry ban on all travelers from India, including NZ citizens, after a spike in COVID-19 cases at the border from the South Asian nation — which set another pandemic record on Thursday.
Driving the news: NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced at a briefing the 17-day suspension after 17 of the 23 new coronavirus infections confirmed Thursday in returned travelers in managed hotel quarantine were from India.
