Herd immunity is a term that has been bandied around since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The recent surge of COVID-19, driven by the Delta variant, has reignited political controversy around mask-wearing in the United States (US), with some governors opposing all measures to make masks mandatory despite advice from health authorities. The dispute feels familiar, harkening back to the early days of the pandemic when masks became a symbol of political affiliation in the US - the clash led by then-president Donald Trump, who made it a point of&amp

I’m writing from Victoria, the Australian state that became, in 1970, the first jurisdiction in the world to make it compulsory to wear a seat belt in a car. The legislation was attacked as a violation of individual freedom, but Victorians accepted it because it saved lives. Now most of the world has similar legislation.

The Philippines sent millions of children back into lockdown Friday as hospitals prepared for a surge in coronavirus cases fuelled by the highly contagious Delta variant ravaging neighbouring countries.Nearly half of the 47 cases of the more virulent strain detected so far were locally acquired, the health department said, raising fears of a sharp uptick in infections that have topped 1.5 million since the start of the pandemic."The Delta variant is more infectious and deadly," said

It has now been 18 months since the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first sequenced in China. Within a month, the World Health Organization (WHO) had issued its highest possible global alert, declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Weeks later, the WHO declared a pandemic. Yet we are nowhere near the end of the crisis. On the contrary, we have entered a dangerous new phase in its evolution.

Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:Scaled-Down HajjPilgrims start arriving in the holy city of Mecca for the second downsized hajj staged during the coronavirus pandemic, circling Islam's holiest site in masks and on distanced paths.The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is allowing only 60,000 fully vaccinated residents to take part, seeking to repeat last year's success that saw no virus outbreak during the five-day ritual.Greek Party Island CurfewGreece imposes a fiv

Younger adults admitted to hospital with COVID are almost as likely to suffer from complications as those over 50 years old, a study has found.Four in 10 of those between 19 and 49 developed problems with their kidneys, lungs or other organs while treated.The research looked at 73,197 adults of all ages across 302 United Kingdom (UK) hospitals in the first wave of COVID in 2020."The message is that this is not just a disease of the elderly and frail," said Prof Calum Semple, who led

New variants of COVID-19 are suspected of causing a sudden jump in the number of cases in the Russian capital, the mayor said Thursday, amid a sluggish vaccination drive."It's most likely we are facing new, more aggressive variants which spread more quickly," said mayor Sergei Sobyanin during a video conference with government officials battling the pandemic.He noted that daily infections in the capital had soared from 3,000 to 7,000 within a few days and were expected to hit m

Three million foreigners living in Thailand have as much right to COVID-19 vaccinations as Thais because the goal is to achieve herd immunity, the government declared on Thursday.The policy is to vaccinate everyone in Thailand no matter whether they are Thais or foreigners.