Cooperate with Covid probe, China told

Geneva: World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Ghebreyesus has called on China to cooperate with the ongoing investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 amid renewed call to further probe the virus.

Dr Tedros made these remarks after taking part in the Group of Seven (G7) summit by video conference on Saturday, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

The WHO Director-General hoped there would be better cooperation and transparency when the next phase of the probe into the virus's origin is underway. "As you know we will need cooperation from the Chinese side," he said.

"We need transparency to understand or know or find the origin of this virus...after the report was released there were difficulties in the data sharing, especially in the raw data."

He further said that the preparations for the probe's next steps were underway and that the issue of the origin of the virus was discussed by G7 leaders on Saturday, WSJ reported.

Chinese researchers have found a new batch of coronaviruses in bats. One of them, Rhinolophus pusillus virus, maybe genetically the second-closest to the Covid-19 virus till now, the Chinese researchers have said.

The discoveries in a single, small region of Yunnan province in China indicate just how many coronaviruses can exist in bats and how many have the potential to spread to people and a wide range of domestic and wild animals, including pigs, cattle, mice, cats, dogs, and chickens.

India's Covid cases continued to witness decline as it recorded 80,834 new Covid cases, lowest since April 1 and 3,303 deaths due to the virus in the last 24 hours To plug a major health infrastructure gap in India's fight against Covid-19, especially in rural areas and smaller towns, India has started project 'Extension of Hospitals' in various states.

Modular hospitals are an extension of hospital infrastructure and can be built adjacent to an existing hospital building.

Over the past few days, Maharashtra has been revising its Covid death numbers to reflect data that came in with some lapse of time. This exercise over the past 12 days has resulted in the state's overall pandemic-related mortality zooming by over 8,800 to 1.08 lakh now.