Five years on from the start of the pandemic, Donald Trump’s new CIA director has weighed into the contentious debate saying a lab leak was “most likely”.

China says it's "extremely unlikely" that COVID-19​ came from a lab, after the CIA said it believed​, though with low confidence, that it did, rather than from natural transmission.

Ex-CNN editor Chris Cilizza conceded on Monday that he "screwed up" in his assessment of the lab leak theory, suggesting that President Trump was likely right about COVID's origins.

The problem for the lab-leak position is that the U.S. has never had access to the Wuhan lab and has thus been unable to reach a definitive answer for more than five years. Now that the CIA has at last come to a conclusion, not all scientists are sold on what it has reported, seeing the results as thinly scientifically sourced.

The CIA says lab leak is most likely source of COVID outbreak. But there is no consensus among scientists whether it originated in nature or from an accidental leak. Not to mention the fact we're still living with COVID: The World Health Organization COVID-19 Dashboard continues to report hundreds of thousands of cases every month worldwide.

Although long-term nursing home stay or death decreased before the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend slowed during the pandemic across all racial and ethnic groups.

Trump returns to the White House as the tenth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic once again inundates hospitals, while the last vestiges of public health are set for destruction.

An analysis of changes in labor and sales for restaurants from 2019-2023 shows how the longer term effects of COVID led to higher sales for the industry.

In contrast to the lockdowns imposed in many countries around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Japanese authorities issued health advisories and counted on citizens to follow them voluntarily.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Senate confirmation hearing took place on Wednesday, an Akron Press Club panel spoke on Trump's pick, other topical issues.

While operating at a loss since 2020 and laying off a handful of employees within the last seven months to compensate for an approximate $4.5 million shortfall, the two highest earners at the Dayton Art Institute saw their salaries increase by tens of thousands during the COVID-19 pandemic,

AISD said the latest testing cycle of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, showed that AISD student scores were higher than state, peer-districts, national charter students,