Wuhan, Ground Zero for coronavirus epidemic, re-opens all schools
BEIJING, China — Students in face masks returned to class Tuesday in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the coronavirus first emerged last year, as the city opened schools and kindergartens for the first time in seven months.
Nearly 1.4 million students resumed classes at some 2,800 kindergartens, primary and middle schools across the city, following the re-opening of high schools in May.
State media broadcast images of thousands of students hoisting the Chinese flag -- a daily routine at all public schools -- despite warnings to avoid mass gatherings.
Schools have drawn up plans to switch back to online teaching should new outbreaks emerge, city officials said last week.
Students were advised to wear masks to and from school and avoid public buses or trains if possible.
Schools were also ordered to conduct drills and training sessions to help prepare for new outbreaks.
Official figures show Wuhan accounted for 80 percent of China's more than 4,600 coronavirus-related deaths and was under a strict lockdown for more than two months from late January.
The city also conducted a mass testing campaign targeting ll million residents in May.
China has now largely controlled the spread of the virus, and schools across the country -- which were closed in late January -- have gradually re-opened.
Shanghai re-opened schools in May, and the capital city Beijing, which recently suffered from a local outbreak of the virus, said it will resume all schools including kindergartens in September.
Beijing authorities require teachers and students to wear face masks on campus.
China has not reported any new local transmissions of the coronavirus in recent days.
Follow this page for updates on a mysterious pneumonia outbreak that has struck dozens of people in China.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says on Sunday that he had contracted COVID-19, testing positive at a key point in his flailing campaign for re-election.
Hipkins saYS on his official social media feed that he would need to isolate for up to five days -- less than two weeks before his country's general election.
The leader of the centre-left Labour Party said he started to experience cold symptoms on Saturday and had cancelled most of his weekend engagements. — AFP
The World Health Organization and US health authorities say Friday they are closely monitoring a new variant of COVID-19, although the potential impact of BA.2.86 is currently unknown.
The WHO classified the new variant as one under surveillance "due to the large number (more than 30) of spike gene mutations it carries", it wrote in a bulletin about the pandemic late Thursday.
So far, the variant has only been detected in Israel, Denmark and the United States. — AFP
The World Health Organization says on Friday that the number of new COVID-19 cases reported worldwide rose by 80% in the last month, days after designating a new "variant of interest".
The WHO declared in May that Covid is no longer a global health emergency, but has warned that the virus will continue to circulate and mutate, causing occasional spikes in infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In its weekly update, the UN agency said that nations reported nearly 1.5 million new cases from July 10 to August 6, an 80% increase compared to the previous 28 days. — AFP
The head of US intelligence says that there was no evidence that the COVID-19 virus was created in the Chinese government's Wuhan research lab.
In a declassified report, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says they had no information backing recent claims that three scientists at the lab were some of the very first infected with COVID-19 and may have created the virus themselves.
Drawing on intelligence collected by various member agencies of the US intelligence community (IC), the ODNI report says some scientists at the Wuhan lab had done genetic engineering of coronaviruses similar to COVID-19. — AFP
Boris Johnson deliberately misled MPs over Covid lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street when he was prime minister, a UK parliament committee ruled on Thursday.
The cross-party Privileges Committee said Johnson, 58, would have been suspended as an MP for 90 days for "repeated contempts (of parliament) and for seeking to undermine the parliamentary process".
But he avoided any formal sanction by his peers in the House of Commons by resigning as an MP last week.
In his resignation statement last Friday, Johnson pre-empted publication of the committee's conclusions, claiming a political stitch-up, even though the body has a majority from his own party.
He was unrepentant again on Thursday, accusing the committee of being "anti-democratic... to bring about what is intended to be the final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination".
Calling it "beneath contempt", he said it was "for the people of this to decide who sits in parliament, not Harriet Harman", the veteran opposition Labour MP who chaired the seven-person committee. — AFP
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