However, countries like China placed them in quarantine to observe them. Similar reports came from other countries as well, including Korea, where the local CDC reported in mid-April that hundreds of patients had tested positive again. The medical authority observed the evolution of the new patients in the weeks since then, and delivered the best possible preliminary news about coronavirus reinfections: It’s not a relapse.

The KCDC officials published the findings of the study online, revealing that it investigated 285 “re-positive” cases, as well as their 790 contacts. Of those, 27 contacts were positive, 24 of which were cases that were previously confirmed. The other three were cases that were exposed to a religious group or a case in their families, so there is a high likelihood that they were infected by someone other than the “reinfected” individual.

The study says that it took 45 days on average from initial symptom onset to test positive a second time, or 14.3 days from discharge. As many as 44.7% of the patients had symptoms including cough and sore throat, the report says. 60% of them were tested for screening, regardless of symptoms.

The doctors also discovered neutralizing antibodies in all re-positive cases as well as the newly confirmed cases, which is a marker of COVID-19 immunity.

Read it all.

Study finds that people who test positive for coronavirus after recovering are not infectious https://t.co/TdkT3ozP0c pic.twitter.com/kMXremqtSY

— BGR.com (@BGR) May 19, 2020

Risen Christ,
by the lakeside you renewed your call to your disciples:
help your Church to obey your command
and draw the nations to the fire of your love,
to the glory of God the Father.
Amen.

TOMORROW at 1PM | Christian art expert and ISM professor Vasileios Marinis explore the imagery of Easter in the Orthodox Christian tradition through one of the famed mosaics from the Greek monastery Hosios Loukas. Watch it on Facebook or our website https://t.co/IwVNXs9pJk pic.twitter.com/IVaYbnqZ1J

— Yale Institute of Sacred Music (@yaleism) April 20, 2020

Lyrics:

If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father,
and he will give you another comforter, that he may bide with you for ever, e’vn the spirit of truth.

–John 14: 15-17

My experience of becoming a Christian wasn’t like flipping a switch. Believing the gospel didn’t automatically lead me to conformity to Jesus Christ or produce the immediate fruit of righteousness in me. While I desperately desired the gift of forgiveness, I was reluctant to change anything else about my life or worldview. Given the enormous differences between Christianity and my earlier Hindu beliefs, my new life had to be nurtured before spiritual growth could occur.

Intellectually, I wrestled with three fundamental questions: Who is God? Who am I? What is my relationship with God? The more I pondered these questions, the clearer it became that the answers offered by Hinduism and Christianity are utterly incompatible. I had to reject the former to receive the latter. Functionally, I had to rethink all of life from a clean slate because I simply did not have a framework or vocabulary to make sense of my new identity.

Paul needed an Ananias to spark his conversion, but he also needed a Barnabas to accompany him in his new journey of faith. God similarly ordained the support I needed to grow as a disciple. While Hinduism ties one’s religious standing to one’s birth status, Christianity teaches that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. My new Christian community cared not about my first birth but about my new birth: my confession of faith, my commitment to fellowship, and my desire to live wholly for Christ.

Every genuine Christian conversion is a miracle—a transition from spiritual death to eternal life, from enmity with God to adoption into his family. Yet God seems to take special delight in seemingly impossible cases—like Paul, a former persecutor—so that the riches of his grace might shine all the brighter. When I consider the chasm between my old outlook on life and my new life in Christ, I can only marvel at God’s work of redemption—and fall down at his feet in praise.

Read it all.

The Humbling of a Proud Hindu

How God got my attention when I thought I was too good for grace.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks to the Jewish leader Nicodemus, who was curious but also confused about the notion of being born again. In the course of explaining the diffe… pic.twitter.com/UVClrmnfP3

— Lagrimas DeMadonna (@lagrimasshop) May 18, 2020

An experimental vaccine may help protect against a coronavirus infection, preliminary results from people and mice suggest.

One or two doses of an mRNA vaccine prod people’s bodies to make as many or more antibodies against the coronavirus as are made by people who have recovered from COVID-19, researchers from Moderna, Inc., announced May 18.

Moderna, based in Cambridge, Mass., and the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., worked together to develop the vaccine, known as mRNA-1273 (SN: 2/21/20).

Their approach uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, a genetic molecule that cellular machinery reads in order to build proteins. In this case, the mRNA contains instructions for building the coronavirus’ spike protein, which helps the virus enter human cells. The vaccine induces human cells to make the spike protein. The immune system then makes antibodies to latch onto the spike proteins. Should a vaccinated person encounter the virus later, those vaccine-stimulated antibodies may prevent the virus from infecting healthy cells.

Read it all.

Early results suggest a coronavirus vaccine works, but more human trials are needed. https://t.co/K4BFMG0At3

— Science News (@ScienceNews) May 18, 2020

This [past] week, nearly all U.S. church leaders (96%) express confidence in their church’s survival rate despite current disruptions. A quarter (25%) is confident, with another seven in 10 (71%) stating they are “very” confident in this scenario. Three percent remain unsure, and a single percent doubts their church doors will reopen again.

What makes the majority of pastors so sure their church will reopen again? Three in five (60%) believe their people are excited and anxious to return to church. One-quarter attributes this confidence to their current financial standing, with 21 percent saying their finances have remained stable during the crisis and another 4 percent voicing optimism that their finances will recover. One in 10 (11%) believes that God will not allow their church to close.

Read it all.

On churches re-opening, “ I’m encouraging church leaders to do, especially smaller churches, is to find out what your peers are doing in other churches.” – Thom Rainer https://t.co/uwtwCH5v5I

— Barna Group (@BarnaGroup) May 18, 2020

The text comes from Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. Inge B. Milfull (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 317-8. Here’s a translation:

Hail Dunstan, star and shining adornment of bishops, true light of the English nation and leader preceding it on its path to God.

You are the greatest hope of your people, and also an innermost sweetness, breathing the honey-sweet fragrance of life-giving balms.

In you, Father, we trust, we to whom nothing is more pleasing than you are. To you we stretch out our hands, to you we pour out our prayers….

Read it all.

St Dunstan, one of the greatest saints of Anglo-Saxon England, died on 19 May 988. He was famously multi-talented: not just an archbishop, statesman, and scholar, but a musician, metal-worker, and devil-fighter too. https://t.co/HblFsbRp5o pic.twitter.com/zDHarSG7RG

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) May 19, 2019

O God of truth and beauty, who didst richly endow thy Bishop Dunstan with skill in music and the working of metals, and with gifts of administration and reforming zeal: Teach us, we beseech thee, to see in thee the source of all our talents, and move us to offer them for the adornment of worship and the advancement of true religion; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

On this, his saints day, the statue of St Dunstan, carved by Anton Wagner, was dedicated in 1993. It was given in memory of George Taylor by the serving team, of which George was a member, and The Friends of Tewkesbury Abbey. pic.twitter.com/pcREafloKH

— Tewkesbury Abbey (@TewkesAbbey) May 19, 2020

O God, Who by Thine Almighty Word dost enlighten every man that cometh into the world: enlighten, we beseech Thee, the hearts of us Thy servants by the glory of Thy grace, that we may ever think such things as are worthy and well-pleasing to Thy Majesty, and love Thee with a perfect heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Saint Alcuin by Tyrolean 16th Century, c. 1500/1525 #art #painting pic.twitter.com/N32j04cxOX

— Haskell Fine Art (@SMCHFineArt) June 6, 2016

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was borne at the proper time.

–1 Timothy 2:1-6