The lambda variant of coronavirus, first seen in Peru and Chile, has now spread to 27 other countries and new research just out suggests it’s better than other variants at escaping the antibodies produced by the CoronaVac vaccine that’s widely used in Latin America. The WHO does only currently classify it as a variant of interest and not a variant of concern. Ricardo Soto Rifo from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Chile, Santiago who conducted this new research explains his findings.

A charity in the UK called Ovacome has long run in person support groups for women with ovarian cancer. And now women who live miles apart, but share similar experiences have got to know each other very well, online, during the pandemic. To find out what happens in these meetings, Health Check dropped in, on Zoom, to listen in to Gill, Gillian, Siobhan, Allyson and Jo.

Dr Per Block, a research lecturer at the University of Oxford, has been investigating whether moods are contagious and crucially whether we pick on up good moods or bad moods more easily. The results of his study with teenage members of choirs and orchestras who were away on tour together have just been published in the journal Emotion. He tells Claudia what he found.

Claudia’s studio guest is family doctor, Ann Robinson, who talks about new research into diet and migraines and whether a David Beckham style plastic boot or a traditional plaster cast is the best treatment for a broken ankle.

Presenter: Claudia Hammond

(Picture: A woman receives her first dose of the CoronaVac vaccine during a door-to-door vaccination day against Covid-19 on 03 July 2021 in a rural area of the Jerusalén municipality, Cundinamarca Department, Colombia. Credit: Guillermo Legaria/Getty Images.)