Thea Koelsen Fischer of the WHO team leaving China at the end of the WHO mission in Wuhan,10 February 2021. (Credit: Keystone/AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

🦇❓Answers still missing after WHO China probe. A team of scientists sent to China by the World Health Organization to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic said it found no evidence of an outbreak in China before December 2019 and dismissed the theory that the virus was leaked from a lab in Wuhan as “extremely unlikely”.

💉💰Access to Covid-19 vaccines an economic imperative. as well as a moral one, Gavi chair Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said on Tuesday at a meeting of members behind the ACT-Accelerator trying to speed up access to vaccines for the world’s poor.

✔️💉Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine given the all clear by WHO panel. It’s set to become the second vaccine approved by the WHO for emergency use. Its efficacy, however, is being challenged by new virus strains, with South Africa saying it would pause the rollout of AstraZeneca’s shot.

Sri Lankan health workers get disinfected after cremation of Covid -19 victims at a cemetery in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 10 February 2021. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

Complaints to the UN over cremations. Muslim families are launching complaints to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) over Sri Lanka’s enforcement of cremations for all those suspected or confirmed to have died from Covid-19, citing a breach of religious rights.

📍 11 February | COVID-19: is the vaccine the (right) solution to eradicate the virus? Looking at the case of Switzerland, global health experts will engage in an online debate discussing whether the vaccine is the only hope to overcome the disease.

📍 16 February | Covid response and digital trust. Non-users of the SwissCovid proximity tracing app cited privacy and data protection as the top reason for not adopting the app. The panel will debate the implications of such technology for global health.

Gender disparities in health. A recent Swiss study published by the Federal Statistics Office reveals health inequalities between women and men. Although on average women live four years longer than men, their general health indicators are worse.