Even as COVID-19 enters its third year as a pandemic, the world is no closer to knowing the source of the virus that sparked it all.Just six weeks after declaring a global health emergency, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of the new coronavirus a pandemic on 11 March, 2020.

The first case of COVID-19 identified in Wuhan, China and presented as such by the World Health Organization (WHO) was actually days later than previously believed and at an animal market, a top scientist said in the journal Science Thursday.Rather than the original patient being a man who had never been to the Wuhan market where wild and domestic animals were sold, the first known case of COVID-19 turns out to have been a woman who had worked in the market, virologist Michael Worobey wrote.F

President Joe Biden said Friday that China was withholding "critical information" on the origins of COVID-19 after the United States (US) intelligence community said it did not believe the virus was a bioweapon – but remained split on whether it escaped from a lab.The US, however, does not believe Chinese officials had foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of the pandemic that has now claimed 4.5 million lives, according to the unclassified summary of an eagerly awa

Authorities in China's Wuhan said Tuesday they would test the city's entire population for COVID-19, as the virus returned to the place where it first emerged and the highly contagious Delta variant drove tightening lockdowns worldwide.A resurgent virus has returned with a vengeance, buoyed by stalling vaccination rates and deadly new mutations even in places which had long touted their successes in overcoming the worst of the pandemic. China brought domestic cases down to

China on Thursday said a World Health Organization (WHO) proposal to audit Chinese labs as part of further investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic showed "disrespect" and "arrogance towards science".Last week, the WHO said a second stage of the international probe should include audits of Chinese labs, amid increasing pressure from the United States (US) for an investigation into a biotech lab in Wuhan. The proposal outlined by WHO chief Tedros

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that the second stage of an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 should include further studies in China and lab audits.In a closed-door briefing to member states, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus proposed five priorities for the next phase of the investigation.They included "audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019", according to

The Huanan seafood wholesale market in central Wuhan was the kind of place where people often caught colds. Vendors started setting up as early as 3:00 am, plunging their hands into buckets of cold water as they cleaned and prepared produce for the customers that arrived every morning.The sprawling market of more than 20 streets spanned two sides of a main road in an upscale neighbourhood of the commercial district of Hankou. Racks of meat were hung on hooks or spilled out on plastic mats.

It has now been a year and a half since we started living with – and too often dying from – COVID-19. Although the pandemic is by no means over, it is not too soon to take a step back and draw some preliminary conclusions from the experience.One conclusion that has turned out to be especially tentative concerns the source of the pandemic.

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

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.