The big western economies have dominated the COVID vaccine market, but rubbing shoulders with them – somewhat unexpectedly – is Chile. It’s secured enough doses to cover its population twice.

While others have paid to get to the front of the queue, Chile has shown that you don’t have to be rich to emerge a winner in the vaccine race. It’s secured doses through canny bargaining, cutting deals with multiple providers and hosting vaccine trials.

Ireland, too, has shown what’s possible. It lifted its second lockdown in November 2020, only for COVID cases and deaths to increase rapidly in the run up to Christmas. Determined not to let transmission run wild, the government put the country back into a strict lockdown – on Christmas Eve no less – and reversed the spike almost as quickly as it appeared.

With governments moving heaven and earth to get the virus under control, it’s strange to think how innocuous this biological menace is in some ways. Mathematician Kit Yates estimates that all the SARS-CoV-2 on the planet could probably fit inside a Coke can.

Scientists have also come up with an efficient way of making wood transparent, and as wood is a better insulator than glass, it could make the green windows of the future. And pigs are also smart enough to play videogames, new research shows.

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