In Germany, hackers managed to forge two “COVID passports” and the entire issuance system was suspended. China’s health ministry expressed outrage at the World Health Organization’s refusal to conduct an audit of its laboratories. Tokyo’s infection rate hit a record high on the eve of the Olympics, and Britain is once again facing shortages on the shelves – these are the top stories related to the coronavirus pandemic. The number of people infected worldwide since the beginning of the pandemic today exceeds 192 million, and the number of deaths related to the virus on the planet – over 4 million. 3.7 billion people have been immunized.
According to scientists, the “ancestor” of Covid-19 could have been transmitted from bats via an intermediate animal in which the virus could have mutated and become contagious to humans. However, it has not yet been possible to determine which animal it was. The Chinese Ministry of Health has angrily refused the World Health Organization’s request to audit its laboratories. The WHO wants to determine the exact origin of the coronavirus to finally disprove or confirm the man-made origin theory. The representative of the Chinese Ministry of Health, Zeng Yixin, said at a press conference on Thursday that he was surprised by the plans and priorities of the WHO investigation. “To be honest, when I first saw the WHO plan for the second phase of the investigation into the origin of the virus, I was very surprised. In this plan, the hypothesis of China’s violation of laboratory procedures and subsequent leakage is prioritized. From this point on, the plan’s disregard for common sense and arrogance toward science only increase,” he said. “We hope that the World Health Organization will take into account the considerations and suggestions of Chinese experts and engage in the investigation of the origin of the virus using scientific methods, without political influence,” said a representative of the Chinese Ministry of Health, adding that China could not accept the current version of the investigation plan. The director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Yuan Zhimin, emphasized at a press conference that there have been no leaks from his lab since 2018 and that it is certified according to international standards.
We explain quickly, simply, and clearly what happened, why it matters, and what happens next. Episodes End of story. Podcast advertising. During the first phase of the investigation, which ended in late March, the organization concluded that the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan biolab was extremely unlikely and that the virus most likely came from bats. Exactly how this happened, however, remains a mystery. This, coupled with the fact that WHO experts conducted their research under the control of the Chinese authorities, has led many scientists and politicians to be skeptical of the organization’s conclusions. In mid-May, about two dozen prominent scientists published an open letter in the leading scientific journal Science questioning the WHO’s conclusions and calling for a more thorough investigation of the man-made origin theory of Covid-19. Please contact WHO
A number of WHO member states are calling for the investigation to continue and for a full investigation of all laboratories that could pose a threat. In addition, China has once again been accused by the organization of being unwilling to cooperate: a week ago, its director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on Beijing to be more transparent. In particular, he noted that China was not in a hurry to provide WHO with data on hospitalized patients from the period just before and just after the pandemic began. The organization was also puzzled by the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s decision in 2019 to remove coronavirus genome sequencing databases from the internet. The director of the institute said Thursday that the decision was made because of concerns about cyberattacks. The theory that the virus originated in a laboratory is still quite popular today, although experts consider it unlikely. At the same time, Gebreisus himself said last week that it was too early to dismiss it.
Proponents of the laboratory origin theory of Covid-19 point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where experiments with coronaviruses were conducted, as the likely source of the initial outbreak. The WHO claims that no traces of a leak in the laboratory have been found. WHO is under international pressure to conduct a thorough investigation and bring it to a conclusion, regardless of the political situation in the world. In late May, U.S. President Joe Biden asked intelligence officials to redouble their efforts to investigate the origins of Covid-19, including the theory that the virus was leaked from a lab in China. The president claims that there is a split within the US intelligence community: some believe that the pandemic was the result of an unfortunate accident in a laboratory, while others believe that the virus originated from human contact with an infected animal.
Emperor Naruhito of Japan on Thursday received a delegation from the International Olympic Committee led by its president, Thomas Bach. There’s less than a day to go before the start of the 2020 Olympics, which Japan has been fighting for since the pandemic began. The country’s authorities said that the games would go ahead under any circumstances and would not be postponed. At the end of March, the organizing committee announced that there would be no foreign spectators at the games, but the competitions were not canceled or postponed. On Thursday, it was revealed that the number of people infected with coronavirus in Tokyo on the day before the start of the Olympic Games is close to a six-month high. In the past day, 1979 people were infected in the city (on January 15 – 2044 people). The infection rate continued to rise even after a state of emergency was declared in the city, which will last until August 22. The Olympics are held under coronavirus restrictions. All athletes are tested daily and are required to maintain social distance and wear masks at all times when not competing, sleeping or eating. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 853,000 people in Japan have been infected with the coronavirus and more than 15,000 have died.
The UK is once again facing a pandemic-related shortage of products, this time due to a shortage of workers. Several UK supermarket chains have announced that an increasing number of their employees will need to self-isolate. As a result, some of these chains will not have all the usual products, and one of them will even close some stores. This is one of the consequences of the so-called “pingdemic” – a wave of isolation alerts that over 600,000 people received during the second week of July. The application requires self-isolation not only for those who are infected, but also for those who have been in contact with them. The labor shortage affected the police, the service sector, the hotel and restaurant industry, and other industries. Read more about how the app has partially “locked down” Britain in our article “Britain on lockdown. How the contact tracing app is crippling life in the country”.
German pharmacies have temporarily suspended the issuance of digital vaccination certificates after hackers gained access to the pharmacists’ association website and forged two certificates using fake accounts. The association learned of the hacking from journalists at the Handelsblatt newspaper, and issued a statement saying it would stop issuing certificates until the investigation is complete. “If the issuance of certificates will continue, the association has not reported”. In Germany, 47% of the population is fully vaccinated, while 60% of citizens have received one dose of the vaccine. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged Germans to get vaccinated as soon as possible. “The more of us who are vaccinated, the freer we will be,” she declared. World-renowned musician Eric Clapton has announced that he will not perform at venues that require all attendees to be vaccinated. “If attendance at the concert is not guaranteed for everyone who wishes to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show,” reads the statement published by Clapton in the Telegram channel of Italian architect Robin Monotti, who has previously expressed skepticism about antivirus restrictions. Clapton accompanied the post with a link to the song “Stand And Deliver,” recorded with Van Morrison, which asks the listener, “Do you want to be a free man or a slave?”