The World Health Organization's international mission to China to investigate the origins of COVID-19 will explore all avenues and is not looking to find "guilty" parties, a team member told AFP.Investigators will head to China in January and to Wuhan, where the first cases were detected 12 months ago in the pandemic that has swept the world, causing giant global health and economic crises."The meetings we had so far with Chinese colleagues were really productive and very

Face masks reduce the risk of spreading large COVID-linked droplets when speaking or coughing by up to 99.9 percent, according to a lab experiment with mechanical mannequins and human subjects, researchers said Wednesday.A woman standing two metres (yards) from a coughing man without a mask will be exposed to 10,000 times more such droplets than if he were wearing one, even if he is only 50 centimetres away, they reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science."There is no more doubt

The European Commission on Tuesday urged EU nations to lift travel bans imposed on Britain to halt the spread of a coronavirus variant that has swept the United Kingdom (UK) and spurred global panic just as vaccines are being rolled out.

A coronavirus outbreak linked to a seafood market in Thailand passed 1,000 cases on Tuesday, as authorities weighed whether to introduce a wider lockdown.Thailand has been on tenterhooks since Thursday following the positive virus test of a 67-year-old prawn seller from Mahachai market, Samut Sakhon province, about 40 minutes southwest of Bangkok.As of early Tuesday morning, there were 1,063 confirmed positive cases out of 6,156 tested - a major outbreak for a country which previously had 4,3

As of the morning of 9 April, Vietnam has reported 251 confirmed cases (1,414 to date) of the new coronavirus with over 120 recoveries (1,269 to date).

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Monday blamed a coronavirus outbreak linked to the kingdom's largest seafood market on low-paid migrant workers employed in the country's lucrative shrimp industry.Thailand has been on high alert since Thursday when a 67-year-old prawn seller from Mahachai market tested positive for coronavirus. Contact tracing and mass testing found more than 800 cases so far linked to the site - a major outbreak for a country which previously had j

Manila teenager Rose Alvarez was 13 when she started having sex with a man who was more than twice her age.

Britain's health minister warned Sunday that a strict lockdown imposed on London and southeast England may last for months because a new strain of the coronavirus was "out of control".Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Saturday that millions must cancel Christmas plans and stay at home from Sunday morning because the new strain was spreading far more quickly. Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned that the strict measures that affect almost a third of England's

Thailand will test more than 10,000 people for coronavirus after an outbreak linked to its biggest seafood market, officials said Sunday.Hundreds of infections have been linked to Mahachai market and port since a 67-year-old female prawn seller tested positive on Thursday - most cases among migrant workers from neighbouring Myanmar, who toil in the kingdom's multi-billion-dollar seafood industry. Authorities ordered Myanmar workers around the market not to leave their residences

Thailand's biggest seafood market and the surrounding area were locked down Saturday to contain a coronavirus outbreak, after the country's largest spike in cases since the pandemic began.Despite being the first place to register an infection outside China, the kingdom had been mostly unscathed by the pandemic, with just over 4,000 cases and 60 deaths so far.But on Saturday night, authorities announced 548 positive cases connected to a seafood market.