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WHO says COVID-19 origins study not extensive enough, cites data access ‘difficulties’

WHO says COVID-19 origins study not extensive enough, cites data access ‘difficulties’

A World Health Organization team probing the new coronavirus's origins cited problems accessing raw data, the health agency's chief said on Tuesday, calling for further studies because the assessment, so far, has not been extensive enough. "In my discussions with the team, they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after the report of a team that traveled to Wuhan, China, this year was released. "I expect future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing." Although the team concluded a laboratory leak was the least likely hypothesis for the…
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WHO investigators heading to China in early January to probe virus

WHO investigators heading to China in early January to probe virus

WORLD Health Organization (WHO) is to send an international team led by the U.N. agency to China in the first week of January to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Mike Ryan, WHO's top emergency expert, said international experts would go to the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first cases of COVID-19 were detected last December. "We still don't have a take-off date because we are working on the logistics around visas and flights. We do expect the team to be going there in the first week of January. There will be quarantine arrangements," Ryan told a…
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One year on, Wuhan market at epicentre of virus outbreak remains barricaded, empty

One year on, Wuhan market at epicentre of virus outbreak remains barricaded, empty

CATE CADELL  FOR over six years, 38-year-old Wuhan restaurant owner Lai Yun started most days the same way - with a trip to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, just ten minutes walk from his house. "I'd send the kids to school, have breakfast and then walk over to the market. It was very convenient," he said. That changed on Dec. 31, 2019, after four cases of a mystery pneumonia were linked to the market and it was shuttered overnight. By the end of the month, the city had begun a gruelling 76-day lockdown that came with just hours notice and…
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How COVID upended life as we knew it in a matter of weeks

How COVID upended life as we knew it in a matter of weeks

ALEXANDRA HUDSON ON January 1, 2020, as the world welcomed a new decade, Chinese authorities in Wuhan shut down a seafood market in the central city of 11 million, suspecting that an outbreak of a new "viral pneumonia" affecting 27 people might be linked to the site. Early lab tests in China pointed to a new coronavirus. By January 20 it had spread to three countries. For most people, it was a minor health scare unfolding half a world away. Nearly a year later it has changed lives fundamentally. Almost everyone has been affected, be it through illness, losing loved…
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2020: Nigeria’s PR Inflection Point

2020: Nigeria’s PR Inflection Point

MOLIEHI MOLEKOA  THE term, 20/20, is an expression of your ability to see at a distance. Ironically, no one really saw this coming in 2020. The escalation of flu-like illness which originated in Wuhan, one of the world’s biggest “optics valleys” and advanced manufacturing hubs, to a global pandemic in just a matter of weeks transformed every industry and all aspects of our lives. It is against this backdrop that the Nigeria PR Report 2020 was launched.   To the public relations industry’s credit, which has seen its fair share of upheavals, has remained consistently hardworking through the months of lockdown…
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WHO says China team interviewed Wuhan scientists over virus origins

WHO says China team interviewed Wuhan scientists over virus origins

A World Health Organization team in China to probe the origins of COVID-19 had "extensive discussions" and exchanges with scientists in Wuhan where the outbreak was first detected, a spokesman has said. The talks included updates on animal health research, he said. China shut down a wildlife market in Wuhan at the start of the outbreak, a day after discovering some patients were vendors or dealers. The WHO says the virus most likely came from bats and probably had another, intermediary animal "host". The results of the WHO investigation are keenly awaited by scientists and governments around the world, none…
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