The slow search for the origin of Covid-...

Children who are so obese they’re banned from their local gyms. Two and three year olds who are so used to juice and fizzy drinks they find it difficult to drink water. This is the child obesity epidemic hitting Italy. The country is often considered the spiritual home of the fab ... Show More

The personal correspondence, photographs and papers of the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein have been released to the public in stages, beginning in December 2025, after an almost unanimous vote in the US Senate. The released files run to three and a half ... Show More

Late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe died in 2019, but in the years before and since his death, his three children with his former wife, Grace, consistenly made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In April 2026 Bellarmine Mugabe pled guilty to a firearms offence in South Afri ... Show More

Scientists from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan say the novel coronavirus did not leak from there, adding that science and international cooperation should play their roles in finding the source of the virus. Researchers from the lab have shared their insights into the origin ... Show More

A mysterious new virus has emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan and is rapidly being identified in patients across the globe. Signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. Hundreds have been infected and some deat ... Show More

Millions in Wuhan, China, the city where the novel coronavirus first emerged, are trying to figure out what life looks like in the bustling industrial city after the worst pandemic in a century. Bloomberg’s Beijing bureau chief Sharon Chen went to Wuhan recently to explore life a ... Show More

As the global effort to control Covid-19 continues so arguments about culpability for the spread of the pandemic intensify. At the centre of the story is China, where the outbreak began. Did the Chinese government’s impulse to cover up the truth cost the world dear? Or did China ... Show More

<p>In the end, the World Health Organisation’s report in March revealed little. We ask why the coronavirus origin story is so crucial, and whether China will ever let it be told. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson will <a href="https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/08/14/bor ... Show More

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been allegations that SARS-CoV-2 could have originated in a Chinese lab. A phase one WHO investigation concluded that a 'lab-leak' was "extremely unlikely" and yet, the theory has seen a resurgence in recent weeks with several scien ... Show More

<p>Everyone wants to know where the coronavirus came from. In the absence of a clear explanation, several theories are circulating — including one, pushed by the Trump administration, that the pandemic started because of malpractice in a lab in Wuhan, China. But is that a secret ... Show More

Two recent scientific publications show that the pandemic originated in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, in Wuhan, China. The publications are not yet peer reviewed but seem to put paid to the theory that the virus escaped from a Wuhan virology lab.