COVID-19 variants are to be known by letters of the Greek alphabet to avoid stigmatising nations where they were first detected, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Monday.The new system applies to variants of concern – the most troubling of which four are in circulation – and the second-level variants of interest being tracked."They will not replace existing scientific names, but are aimed to help in public discussion," said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19

A shadow government in Myanmar seeking to reverse the 1 February coup has joined forces with a rebel group to "demolish" junta rule, it said Saturday.Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) government and launched a brutal crackdown on dissent.

Prevention is better than cure – but when it comes to COVID, what happens when people can't get the vaccine, don't want it, or they're immune suppressed and it fails to stop infection?The hunt is on for a coronavirus treatment that can be taken as a pill soon after a confirmed positive, halting the disease in its tracks so that cases that might have been severe end up being nothing more than a bad cold.Several companies are working on so-called oral antivirals, which would mimi

Vietnam has discovered a new COVID-19 variant which spreads quickly by air and is a combination of the Indian and British strains, health officials confirmed Saturday.The country is struggling to deal with fresh outbreaks across more than half of its territory, including industrial zones and big cities such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City."We have discovered a new hybrid variant from the Indian and the UK strains," Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told a national meeting on the pande

A coronavirus surge sweeping through Thailand's prisons has thrown the spotlight on the kingdom's overcrowded penal system, where some inmates have less space to sleep than the inside of a coffin.More than 22,000 people have tested positive inside jails, where inmates living cheek by jowl have been encouraged to keep wearing their masks even while they sleep.Authorities have floated plans to give early releases to prisoners with underlying medical conditions and have announ

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday that efforts to uncover the COVID-19 pandemic's origins were being hampered by politics, insisting scientists needed space to work on solving the mystery."We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere," WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan told reporters."This whole process is being poisoned by politics," he warned.&am

Malaysia announced on Friday it will impose a nationwide lockdown for the first time in over a year as it battles a rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak that has strained the country's healthcare system.Officials believe more infectious variants have contributed to the surge, as well as gatherings in the Muslim-majority country during the holy month of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr holiday earlier this month.After a new daily record of 8,290 infections Friday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassi

President Joe Biden has ordered United States (US) intelligence agencies to conduct a 90-day review of what is known about the origins of COVID-19 and whether it could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.

Facebook has reversed its policy banning posts suggesting COVID-19 emerged from a laboratory amid renewed debate over the origins of the virus, raising fresh questions about social media's role in policing misinformation.The latest move by Facebook, announced late Wednesday on its website, highlights the challenge for the world's largest social network of rooting out false and potentially harmful content while remaining open for discourse."In light of ongoing investigations int

Vietnam began vaccinating hundreds of thousands of factory workers in its industrialised north on Thursday to combat its largest COVID-19 outbreak so far, days after the country reported a daily record in new cases.The communist country has been widely applauded for its aggressive pandemic response – with mass quarantines and strict contact tracing helping keep infection rates low – but clusters have now been reported in around half of its provinces and cities.Among the hardest hit are northe