COVID-19 shows world needs a better early-warning system Jonathan Gornall Short Url https://arab.news/68svk It will still be many months before we see the back of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) but, as various vaccines start to come on stream, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yet, even as the beginning of the end of the pandemic looms, research from around the world is beginning to pose unsettling questions about where and when it all began — and, in the process, offering clues as to how the world might better defend itself against the next micro-killer. The SARS-CoV-2 virus first emerged in Wuhan, central China, in the dying days of 2019 — or so it is widely thought. On Jan. 11, 2020, the day China reported its first death, Beijing made the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus available. Two days later, the first case cropped up abroad, in Thailand. By Jan. 21, the virus had reached America and, on Jan. 29, the UAE reported the first case in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region.