President Joe Biden on Wednesday. The President tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday.AP

CLEVELAND, Ohio— President Biden tests positive for COVID-19, Europe ignores COVID-19 warnings, a face mask that kills COVID-19 on contact, and a team from Ohio State University finds and fixes a software flaw in contact tracing apps that make them vulnerable to hackers.

Cleveland.com has the latest coronavirus news and research for Friday July 22, 2022.

President Biden tests positive for COVID-19

In a video message posted to twitter on Thursday afternoon, President Joe Biden announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19. The president said he has been double vaccinated and double boosted. He reports his symptoms as mild, a runny nose and a cough.

He’s reported to be working and resting in isolation at the White House.

In accordance with CDC guidelines, the president will need to remain in isolation until at least Tuesday, and is taking Paxlovid, an antiviral drug approved for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms.

Europeans ignore advice to ramp up COVID-19 restrictions

World Health Organization European Director Hans Kluge says there were 3 million new COVID-19 cases, and 3,000 deaths reported in Europe last week. Kluge is calling for European countries to reinstate mask mandates, and increase vaccinations now, or he says they may face tighter restrictions in the fall and winter.

However, it appears Europeans are not listening. The New York Times reports that despite a huge wave in positive cases due to the BA.5 Omicron subvariant, European hospitals are not seeing an increase in severe cases, intensive care unit admissions, or deaths, and consequently most Europeans are content to live with the virus.

Almost everywhere, shops are open, people are unmasked, and social distancing is not respected, reports the Times.

University of Kentucky researchers develop COVID-19 antiviral face mask

A team of University of Kentucky researchers have developed a medical face mask membrane that can capture and deactivate the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on contact.

SARS-CoV-2 is covered in spike proteins, which allow the virus to enter host cells once in the body. The team developed a membrane that includes proteolytic enzymes that attach to the protein spikes and deactivates them.

The membrane material was tested using SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins that were immobilized on synthetic particles. Not only could the material filter out coronavirus-sized aerosols, but it was also able to destroy the spike proteins within 30 seconds of contact.

The study reports that the membrane provided a protection factor above the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s standard for N95 masks, meaning that it could filter at least 95% of airborne particles.

“This new material can filter out the virus like the N95 mask does, but also includes antiviral enzymes that completely deactivate it. This innovation is another layer of protection against SARS-CoV-2 that can help prevent the virus from spreading,” said DB, the director of UK’s Center of Membrane Sciences.

Their work was published in the Nature journal Communications Materials on May 24.

Ohio State researchers prevent digital attacks on contact tracing apps

Computer scientists at Ohio State University have found --and fixed-- a privacy flaw in Google/Apple contact tracing apps that make the apps vulnerable to hackers.

Scientists and health authorities have relied on contact-tracing technologies to help manage the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Yet the researchers say there’s a major flaw in a framework that many of these mobile apps utilize – one that attackers could exploit to ramp up false positive notifications.

The team from OSU said they found that these apps are susceptible to geographically based replay attacks, which is when a third party captures a user’s broadcasted contact-tracing phone data from one area and exploits it by repeatedly transmitting it in another far-away location. By exploiting this flaw, attackers could falsely someone that they have been in contact with someone who has COVID-19, and essentially create digital superspreaders.

The team presented its solution on July 12 at the annual meeting of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) conference held this year in Sydney, Australia.

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