SWITZERLAND: Global health experts gathered on Thursday to tackle new coronavirus strains blamed for a fresh surge in infections as countries including Britain and France tightened restrictions to head off a further worsening of the pandemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency Committee session came as their colleagues were seeking the origins of the virus on a long-delayed mission to the pandemic ground zero in Wuhan.
Almost two million of the more than 91 million people who have caught the disease have died, but the figures are widely believed to be an underestimate. "When you first met almost a year ago, just 557 cases of the disease of what we now call COVID-19 had been reported to WHO," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his opening remarks to the emergency meeting.
Much of the planet is facing a second or third wave of infections, with populations chafing under painful and economically damaging restrictions.
The strain, known as E484K, was detected initially in South Africa and on subsequent variants in Brazil and Japan, and it has raised greater alarm among researchers over its possible impact on immunity.
WHO's Emergency Committee normally gathers every three months, but the meeting was brought forward by two weeks. - AFP
