Recently an operator of a restaurant in Kedah, a state in northwest Malaysia, who flouted the mandatory home quarantine rule after returning from India tested positive for COVID-19 on 28 July – resulting in the infamous Sivaganga cluster, involving his restaurant employees and patrons.

Forced off the road by coronavirus lockdowns, Philippine "jeepney" driver Daniel Flores now plies the streets of Manila on foot begging for money to feed his hungry family.The 23-year-old has not picked up a passenger since March when public transport was halted and people ordered to stay home as President Rodrigo Duterte's government tried to slow the fast-spreading contagion.Jeepneys - first made from leftover US jeeps after World War II - are a national symbol in the Philipp

As nations around the world scramble to combat the deadly COVID-19 virus, it is important to remember that old diseases continue to remain a threat to many. Recently, the bubonic plague, once considered an ancient disease, triggered a health warning in China and Mongolia as fresh cases were reported, whereas ASEAN member state Malaysia reported its first polio case in 27 years late last year.

Indian ship worker Tejasvi Duseja is desperate to go home after months stranded offshore by coronavirus border closures and lockdowns that have left more than 200,000 seafarers in limbo.From engineers on cargo ships to waiters on luxury cruise liners, ocean-based workers around the world have been caught up in what the United Nations (UN) warns is a growing humanitarian crisis that has been blamed for several suicides. Many have been trapped on vessels for months after their tours we

Singapore's economy shrank more than 40 percent in the second quarter as the coronavirus plunged the Southeast Asian financial hub into recession for the first time in more than a decade, official data showed Tuesday.The 41.2 percent quarter-on-quarter drop was the worst ever recorded in the city-state, which is considered a barometer for the health of global trade. On-year, the economy contracted 12.6 percent in April-June, according to preliminary data released by the trade mi

Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.From 2011 to 2018, researcher

The novel coronavirus is twice as infectious within households than similar diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), with a substantial number of additional infections spreading before a COVID-19 sufferer shows any symptoms, according to modelling released Thursday.Researchers based in China and the United States (US) said their findings could have profound impacts on reducing the number of new infections as the pandemic progresses. Using data on 350 COVID-19 patien

The Red Cross and the United Nations (UN) urged countries Wednesday to avoid trying to secure future immunisation jabs against the coronavirus for their populations only, calling for a true "people's vaccine".The groups spoke out as scientists race to identify and test possible vaccines for COVID-19, which has killed more than 380,000 people and infected close to 6.5 million globally.They are also scrambling to find a safe and effective treatment."We need to fight what is

Here are the latest developments from Asia related to the novel coronavirus pandemic: Japan Lifts Emergency For Most RegionsJapan's prime minister lifted a state of emergency imposed due to the coronavirus for the majority of the country but kept it in place for top cities Tokyo and Osaka.

Every week, it seems, the list of coronavirus symptoms - ranging from disagreeable to deadly, from "COVID toes" to toxic shock - grows longer.What began as a familiar flu-like cluster of chills, headaches and fever has rapidly expanded over the last three months into a catalogue of syndromes affecting most of the body's main organs.The new coronavirus can also push the immune system into overdrive, unleashing an indiscriminate assault on pathogens and their human hosts alike.&q