The threat of COVID-19 has not prevented the international community from communicating and cooperating with one another through the “new normal” mode of interaction – video conferencing. Many organisations have resorted to this type of communication in order to maintain contact with its members. This includes the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which held an online summit on 4 May, 2020. The NAM was established in 1961 in Belgrade during the post-World War II period.

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, which triggered a global pandemic at a confounding pace has affected the whole world.

Public opinion in the United States (US) pins the blame for the COVID-19 pandemic squarely on China. After all, that’s where the virus started. And President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have fanned the flames by accusing China of covering up the outbreak and knowingly allowing the novel coronavirus to spread.

The global backlash against China over its culpability for the international spread of the deadly coronavirus from Wuhan has gained momentum in recent weeks. And China itself has added fuel to the fire, as exemplified by its recent legal crackdown on Hong Kong.

Global tensions simmered over the race for a coronavirus vaccine Thursday, as the United States (US) and China traded jabs, and France slammed pharmaceuticals giant Sanofi for suggesting the US would get any eventual vaccine first.Scientists are working at breakneck speed to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, which has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide and pummelled economies.From the US to Europe to Asia, national and local governments are easing lockdow

Emergency teams raced Friday to prevent a coronavirus "nightmare" in the world's largest refugee settlement after the first confirmed cases in a sprawling city of shacks housing nearly a million Rohingya.There have long been warnings the virus could race like wildfire through the cramped, sometimes sewage-soaked alleys of the network of 34 camps in southeast Bangladesh.Most of the refugees have been there since around 750,000 of the Muslim minority fled a 2017 military offensiv

China said Friday it supports a World Health Organization (WHO)-led review into the global response to the coronavirus outbreak, but only "after the pandemic is over".The comments from foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying came as China faces increasing global pressure to allow an international investigation into the origins of the pandemic.The review should be conducted in an "open, transparent and inclusive manner" under the leadership of WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghe

Donald Trump has said he has seen evidence the new coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab, an assertion that threatened on Friday to turn a global health emergency into a diplomatic crisis.The United States (US) president's statement was immediately undermined by intelligence officials and top diplomat Mike Pompeo, who said: "We don't know precisely where it began."But the claim – already denied by Beijing – could stir tensions even as the World Health Organization (WHO)

“This is not a discrete one-off episode,” Wellcome Trust head Jeremy Farrar has warned. “This is now an endemic human infection.”COVID-19, as Farrar suggests, knows no boundaries, geographic, political, or otherwise. Nor must our efforts to defeat it.

The COVID-19 pandemic, much like a major war, is a defining moment for the world – one that demands major reforms of international institutions. The World Health Organization (WHO), whose credibility has taken a severe beating of late, is a good place to start.The WHO is the only institution that can provide global health leadership. But, at a time when such leadership is urgently needed, the body has failed miserably.