covid-19-origin | ABS-CBN News

US Senate bill to sanction Chinese officials blocking coronavirus origins probe

Owen Churchill, South China Morning Post
Updated as of Jan 12 11:08 AM

Sixteen Republican sponsors want to investigate whether the virus somehow escaped from an infectious diseases lab. The bill has no support from Democrats, who have accused Republicans of fueling anti-Asian racism in the US with coronavirus rhetoric. Read more »

Unity of China, US on COVID-19 probe sought to prevent future outbreaks

Eduardo Baptista, South China Morning Post
Posted at Oct 01 01:10 PM

The US and China need to put aside differences and work together to set new safety standards for laboratories doing virus research, said Jeffrey Sachs, chair of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission that oversees task forces to combat the coronavirus pandemic and prevent future outbreaks. Read more »

China defends cooperation with WHO on COVID-19 origins

Catherine Wong, South China Morning Post
Posted at Sep 30 01:13 PM

China has sought to defend its cooperation with the World Health Organization in the search for the origins of COVID-19, releasing a summary of its actions so far. Read more »

Chinese scientists: COVID could have spread first in US

Josephine Ma, South China Morning Post
Posted at Sep 24 12:49 PM

It was 'highly probable' COVID-19 started to spread in the United States in September 2019, a group of Chinese scientists said in a new paper published on the preprint platform of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Read more »

No entry: Trouble ahead in China for the WHO's COVID-19 origins hunt

Simone McCarthy, South China Morning Post
Posted at Jul 28 01:22 PM

The UN mandated body has laid out 5 areas of interest and one of them looks set to thwart hopes for the cooperation needed to track down how this pathogen passed into people.   Read more »

China’s COVID-19 origins snub shows limits to WHO power

Simone McCarthy, South China Morning Post
Posted at Jul 23 01:22 PM

China’s rebuff of the World Health Organization’s planned second phase investigation into the origins of Covid-19 highlights the difficulty it faces in operating amid political pressure from its most powerful members.   Read more »

China rejects WHO plan for study of COVID-19 origin

ABS-CBN News
Updated as of Jul 22 01:48 PM

China rejected on Thursday a World Health Organization plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, a top health official said. Read more »

COVID-19: Scientists say anew there’s no evidence for lab leak theory

Simone McCarthy, South China Morning Post
Posted at Jul 07 12:42 PM

In a letter published in The Lancet medical journal, 2 dozen prominent international scientists backed a recent call from G7 nations for further inquiry into the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, and urged the World Health Organization to “expeditiously” continue a study with experts in China and the Chinese government.   Read more »

Masks off, mortarboards on: Wuhan sheds COVID-19 for mass graduation

Agence France-Presse
Posted at Jun 15 02:15 PM

BEIJING— A huge red banner welcomed more than 11,000 students in Wuhan for a massive graduation ceremony over a year after the city was battered by the first global outbreak of COVID-19.    Read more »

Thousands of wild animals sold in Wuhan markets months before COVID-19 outbreak -report

Simone McCarthy, South China Morning Post
Posted at Jun 10 01:19 PM

Findings by Chinese and British researchers highlight scale of trade in wild species and the poor conditions in which they were kept. The animals on sale include species known to be susceptible to coronaviruses – such as civet cats, mink and raccoon dogs – but not bats or pangolins. Read more »

WHO asks for re-checks of research on when coronavirus first surfaced in Italy

Emilio Parodi, Reuters
Posted at Jun 02 01:17 PM

The UN body reacted to Biden's announcement that intelligence agencies were pursuing rival theories, including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China, by saying the search was being "poisoned by politics".   Read more »

Why scientists are concerned about leaks at biolabs

Issam Ahmed, Lucie Aubourg and Paul Handley, Agence France-Presse
Posted at May 30 10:53 AM

While the evidence linking SARS-CoV-2 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China is strictly circumstantial, a number of experts want tougher controls on such facilities over fears that accidental leaks could touch off the next pandemic.   Read more »

Wuhan market where virus spotted in early stage may be demolished

Kyodo News
Posted at Apr 09 11:23 AM

A market in the central China city of Wuhan, where many people were confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus in the initial stage of the outbreak in late 2019, is expected to be demolished, the nation's media reported Thursday. Read more »

Scientists call for new probe into COVID-19 origins - with or without China

Reuters
Posted at Apr 08 01:15 PM

In an open letter, 24 scientists and researchers from Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan said the study was tainted by politics.   Read more »

COVID-19: Report on WHO-led Wuhan mission leaves unanswered questions

Simone McCarthy, South China Morning Post
Posted at Apr 03 08:32 AM

The 300-page-plus document provides interesting hints of information: there was a rise in acute respiratory illness among the elderly in Wuhan in early December 2019, several weeks before doctors identified an outbreak in the city, and more than half of Wuhan’s earliest known cases had some connection to food markets. Read more »

Draft WHO coronavirus report pours cold water on lab-leak theory - report

Simone McCarthy, South China Morning Post
Posted at Mar 30 01:04 PM

The virus that causes COVID-19 most likely passed from bats into humans via an intermediary animal, but it is “extremely unlikely” that it came from a laboratory leak, according to a draft of a highly anticipated World Health Organization investigation report into the origins of the virus.   Read more »

WHO report says 'very low' chance of frozen food COVID-19 origin

Jing Xuan Teng, Agence France-Presse
Posted at Mar 30 07:46 AM

The chances that COVID-19 emerged in Wuhan because of imported frozen food are "very low", international health experts said Monday, casting doubt on one of the main theories China has embraced for the cause of the first coronavirus outbreak in late 2019. Read more »

First Chinese COVID-19 cases may have been infected in October 2019, says new research

Josephine Ma, South China Morning Post
Updated as of Mar 23 01:30 PM

A study published in the journal Science last week said these cases would have been difficult to detect and the disease would have established a firm foothold among the human population before it was identified.   Read more »

WHO investigators to scrap interim report on probe of COVID-19 origins - report

Reuters
Posted at Mar 05 02:06 PM

No further information was immediately available about the reasons for the delay in publishing the findings of the WHO-led mission to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were detected in late 2019.   Read more »

Coronavirus: US, China should join forces to find the animal host, top Chinese scientists say

Josephine Ma, South China Morning Post
Posted at Mar 02 01:11 PM

Collaboration is also needed to speed vaccine manufacture and distribution, they add. The call comes after the US rejected the findings from the World Health Organization mission to Wuhan because China did not offer ‘requisite transparency’. Read more »