South Korea

COVID and beyond: labs unite to boost genomic surveillance globally Two laboratories in Britain and South Africa, which were at the forefront of tracking new coronavirus variants during the pandemic, have teamed up to keep the focus on genomic surveillance globally as the COVID emergency recedes. Jennifer Rigby Reuters

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Partial recall: Personal beliefs may skew pandemic memories, deepen polarization ArtemisDiana / iStock CIDRAP

Personal motivations color people's memories of the COVID-19 pandemic, biasing their assessment of past political actions and complicating emergency-preparedness planning, suggests an analysis of four empirical studies.

China drops COVID-19 group travel bans to 78 nations including U.S., Japan - UPI.com China announced Thursday it was removing its COVID-19-era restrictions on group travel to nearly 80 countries including the United States and Japan. UPI

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China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced group travel could continue to 78 nations including the two popular destinations as well as Australia, Britain, Germany, Qatar and South Korea.

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Global COVID-19 activity remains mixed CIDRAP

Cases and death continued to decline globally over the past 4 weeks, with hot spots reported in a few countries as XBB Omicron variant proportions continue to shift, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today in its latest weekly update.

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Activity is up, however, in two regions: the Western Pacific by 10% and Africa by 3%. Deaths declined or were stable in all six regions.

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