China's ruling Communist Party leaders have congratulated themselves on their "extremely extraordinary" success in handling the COVID-19 outbreak domestically, ahead of a World Health Organization (WHO) probe into the disease's origins.China faced a barrage of criticism at home and abroad over its initial handling of the virus, which emerged in the central city of Wuhan last December.China's Politburo, the top decision-making body of the Communist Party, said late Fri

China is recasting Wuhan as a heroic coronavirus victim and trying to throw doubt on the pandemic's origin story as it aims to seize the narrative at a time of growing global distrust of Beijing.The PR blitz plays out daily in comments by Chinese officials and lavish state media coverage of a "reborn" Wuhan that trumpets China's epidemic-control efforts and economic recovery while the United States (US) struggles.The drive peaked in the past week as Chinese primary schools

The novel coronavirus crisis has introduced us a to a different world – one with a new normal. Temperature checks, social distancing, masks, work-from-home and distance learning are some of the new norms that all of us need to embrace and adapt to. Governments have imposed strict measures in order to break the chain of infections, this includes travel restrictions and citywide lockdowns.

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.

China said Sunday that relations with the United States (US) were "on the brink of a new Cold War", fuelled in part by tensions over the coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 350,000 people worldwide and pitched the global economy into a massive downturn. Fresh tensions between Beijing and Washington emerged as Muslims around the world celebrated an end to the holy month of Ramadan muted by virus restrictions and as more European nations prepared to further ease their

The new coronavirus which emerged just a few months ago in Wuhan, China has infected over 4.2 million people today. Before the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that the disease would be called COVID-19 – many people, authorities and even the media associated the virus with Wuhan and with China.

A laboratory in the Chinese city at ground zero of the global coronavirus outbreak has rejected United States (US) theories that it spawned the pandemic, as President Donald Trump warned Beijing of consequences if it was "knowingly responsible".The denial came as world governments were debating how and when to ease lockdowns that have kept more than half of humanity - 4.5 billion people - confined to their homes and crippled the global economy.Many of the world's 260 million Or

Here are the latest developments in Asia related to the novel coronavirus pandemic: Wuhan Deaths RiseThe Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged has raised its death toll by 50 percent to a total of 3,869.The revision came as a growing chorus of world leaders suggested China had not been entirely open about the full domestic impact of the virus.The additional deaths in Wuhan were cases that were "mistakenly reported" or missed entirely, according to the official an

Of all the challenges that humans have faced over millennia, disease has always been a particularly brutal and resourceful enemy.The impact of disease has shaped history. Amerindians were ravaged by illnesses that the Spanish conquistadors brought to Mexico and South America; the “stout Cortez” of John Keats’s poem was accompanied by killer diseases like smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday that the original epicentre in China of the coronavirus outbreak at last reporting no new cases gave hope to the rest of the world battling the pandemic.The city of Wuhan registered no new cases of COVID-19 in 24 hours – for the first time since reporting its first case in December in an outbreak that has gone on to infect more than 250,000 people around the world and kill more than 11,000 people."Yesterday, Wuhan reported no new cases for