China's government has urged citizens to stock up on daily necessities and for authorities to take steps to ensure adequate food supplies as the country adopts increasingly tight measures to contain its latest COVID outbreak.A notice posted on the website of the Ministry of Commerce late on Monday urged "families to store a certain amount of daily necessities as needed to meet daily life and emergencies".The directive made no mention of a food shortage or of whether the instruc

It is one of the most remarkable success stories of the pandemic: the unproven technology that delivered the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines in record time, helping to turn the tide on COVID-19. The vaccines are based on mRNA, the molecule that instructs our cells to make specific proteins.

Overseas tourists poured into Bangkok and the holiday island of Phuket on Monday as Thailand kickstarted its tourism industry after 18 months of COVID curbs.The coronavirus pandemic hammered the kingdom's tourism-reliant economy, which last year saw its worst performance since the 1997 Asian financial crisis as arrivals dwindled more than 80 percent.Thai authorities have given the green light to vaccinated tourists from over 60 "low-risk" countries to skip hotel quarantine – pr

Indonesia, hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, became the first country to approve the new vaccine for COVID-19 created by United States (US)-based Novavax, the company announced Monday.The approval will give Indonesia, which has strained to obtain adequate supplies of coronavirus vaccine for its 270 million people, first access to the vaccine, which will be manufactured in India under the brand Covovax.The vaccine uses a different technology than those which already have gained general app

With the world poised to hit more than five million people officially dead from the coronavirus, experts say the pandemic's future path will depend greatly on vaccinations.How Many Dead?The true number of fatalities is believed to be far higher than the five million based on daily reports provided by health authorities in each country.The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the overall toll could be two to three times higher than official records due to the excess mortality linked

Health officials and scientists are closely tracking a new mutation of the coronavirus amid concerns that it could be more transmissible than the original strain.A subvariant of the Delta variant of the virus labelled AY.4.2 has been detected in dozens of countries, with the vast majority of cases being reported in the United Kingdom (UK).“An increase in AY.

Church leaders in Indonesia's conflict-wracked Papua region called for calm Sunday as thousands fled to shelters after a two-year-old boy was killed in a firefight between government troops and independence-seeking rebels.The restive region at the easternmost edge of the Southeast Asian archipelago has been the scene of intermittent clashes for decades in one of the world's longest-running insurgencies. This week, a two-year-old boy was killed in an exchange of gunfire whil

Beijing lashed out against a United States (US) intelligence review into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic on Sunday, calling it "political and false" while urging Washington to "stop attacking" China.The Chinese foreign ministry's retort came days after the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a fuller version of its findings from a 90-day review ordered by President Joe Biden.The paper said that, without new information, intelligence agenci

China’s president, Xi Jinping, has called for mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccines based on the World Health Organization’s emergency use list, according to a transcript of his remarks delivered to leaders of the Group of 20 leaders’ summit, published by the official Xinhua news agency.Speaking to the participants in Rome via video link, Xi said China had provided more than 1.6 billion COVID shots to the world, and was working with 16 nations to cooperate on manufacturing doses.“China is w

Leaders of the world's most advanced nations met Saturday at the G20 summit in Rome hoping to hammer out a way forward on climate change and vaccine equality, with consensus still outstanding on the most pressing global issues. In their first in-person gathering since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the relaunch of the global economy will also be front and centre on the two-day agenda, while the bloc is likely to approve a minimum tax rate for the biggest multinationals.But