The Coronavirus Pandemic: All of WPR’s Coverage Archive

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. After getting off to a slow start when it was launched in January, China’s vaccination campaign has picked up pace, hitting 1 billion total doses administered Saturday, according to the National Health Commission. It is well on track to meet its goal of vaccinating 40 […]

Before the pandemic, Sam Anthony and her partner, Veren Ferrera, crisscrossed the world full-time as digital nomads, sharing their experiences online under the name Alternative Travelers. As members of a niche but growing community of sustainable travel influencers, who earn a living creating travel-related content online, they focused their social media posts on teaching their 8,500 followers how to travel ethically and mindfully. But when the novel coronavirus arrived in the U.S. in March 2020, Anthony and Ferrera found themselves stuck in Salt Lake City, Utah, looking at a year of cancelled travel plans, as the entire tourism industry ground […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. COVID-19 cases are rising across Africa, just as the limited supply of vaccines the continent has received is running dangerously low. Health officials are now asking Western nations that have hoarded early vaccine supplies to share more doses in a desperate bid to […]

Less than one week before a pivotal election in Peru, authorities released a revised count of the pandemic death toll in the South American country. It’s no secret that COVID-19 has devastated Peru, but the figures, nonetheless, were breathtaking. The government put the true number of deaths at 180,764, three times higher than earlier estimates. Other countries will likely recalculate their earlier numbers, as well. But for now, Peru holds the painful distinction of having the world’s highest pandemic death toll by population. Confirmation of just how catastrophic the pandemic has been for Peru helps explain the similarly disastrous political […]

Speaking at the opening of a new parliamentary session in mid-January, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide vowed that this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo would be “proof of humanity’s victory against the coronavirus.” Nearly six months later, Suga’s promise has yet to materialize. Authorities this week extended states of emergency in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan’s two largest cities, in light of COVID-19 caseloads that, while down significantly from their May highs, remain elevated. The country’s health care system is under severe strain, and the government’s vaccine rollout is proceeding at a painfully slow pace. While Japan controlled the […]

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, China Note, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about China. Subscribe to receive it by email every Wednesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Once dismissed by mainstream media as a conspiracy theory, the so-called lab leak hypothesis of the coronavirus’s origins is now making a comeback. The suggestion that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, might have escaped from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan—whether intentionally or accidentally—has gained […]