Covid origin search ‘being poisoned by politics’: WHO

The World Health Organization has warned that efforts to uncover the Covid-19 pandemic's origins were being hampered by politics, insisting scientists needed space to work on solving the mystery. 

"We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere," WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan told reporters.

"This whole process is being poisoned by politics," he warned.

US President Joe Biden this week ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident.

The move hints at growing impatience with waiting for a conclusive WHO investigation into how the pandemic that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide began.

During an ongoing meeting of WHO member states, European Union countries and a range of others also pressed for clarity on the next steps in the organisation's efforts to solve the mystery, seen as vital to averting future pandemics.

But the UN health agency said earlier Friday it was still waiting for recommendations from a team of WHO technical experts on how to move forward.

The WHO managed to send a team of independent, international experts to Wuhan in January, more than a year after Covid-19 first surfaced there in late 2019, to help probe the pandemic origins.

But in their long-delayed report published in late March, the international team and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions, instead ranking a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were.

The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was "extremely unlikely".

Long dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory, and vehemently rejected by Beijing, the idea that Covid-19 emerged from a lab leak in Wuhan in China has been gaining increasing momentum in the United States.

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 3,524,960 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT yesterday.

INDIA POSTS LOWEST DAILY CASES IN 45 DAYS

On Friday, 12,237 new deaths and 524,350 new cases were recorded worldwide.  Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 3,617 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 2,371 and United States with 774.

India yesterday reported 173,790 new coronavirus infections during the previous 24 hours, its lowest daily cases in 45 days, while 3,617 deaths were reported.

The South Asian nation's tally of infections now stands at 27.7 million, with the death toll at 322,512, health ministry data showed.

Malaysia reported 9,020 new coronavirus cases yesterday, the highest daily toll since the start of the pandemic and the fifth straight day of record new infections. 98 death were reported in the last 24 hours, also a new record.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin on Friday announced a two-week nationwide lockdown starting in June, allowing only essential economic and service sectors to stay open.

PFIZER JAB LESS EFFECTIVE AGAINST INDIAN STRAIN

The Pfizer vaccine is slightly less effective but appears to still protect against the more transmissible Indian strain of the virus that causes Covid-19, according to a study by France's  Pasteur Institute.

The study sampled 28 healthcare workers in the city of Orleans. Sixteen of them had received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, while 12 had received one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

People who had received two doses of Pfizer saw a three-fold reduction in their antibodies against the Indian variant, B.1.617, according to the study, but were still protected.

"The situation was different with the AstraZeneca vaccine, which induced particularly low levels of antibodies neutralising" the Indian variant, the study said.

The study shows that "this variant.. has acquired partial resistance to antibodies," Schwartz said.

The Indian strain has now been officially recorded in 53 territories, according to a World Health Organization report.