When compared to people who avoided COVID-19 in the same time period, individuals who reported having COVID in early 2020 were also 1.67 times more likely to have clinically significant levels of anxiety after 13 months.

More than 3,000 UK individuals, representing a cross-section of the general public, were polled by the researchers, who were led by Professor Daryl O'Connor and Dr. Sarah Wilding of the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds.

American tech giant Apple is all set to bring verifiable COVID-19 vaccination cards to Wallet application as part of a future iPhone software update.

Three Chinese astronauts on Thursday successfully boarded the Tiangong space station. This is a new milestone in the development of China's space industry. When the carrier rocket propelled the Shenzhou-12 manned spacecraft into space, it was like a spear that pierced the US' severe technical blockade. This is not only a moment of excitement for the Chinese people, but also a moment of frustration for those who hype the US' "blockade" and "decoupling" with China.

China on Friday expressed opposition to United States President Joe Biden's expansion of restrictions on investments in certain Chinese companies and vowed to take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights of Chinese enterprises.

Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that prohibits US citizens from owning or trading any securities tied to 59 companies, citing alleged ties to China's military and the so-called threat posed by Chinese surveillance technology.

The municipal government of Beijing plans to invest about 1 billion yuan (around 153 million U.S. dollars) in funds this year to help improve education in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The World Health Organization's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) said on Wednesday that the benefits of the AstraZeneca/Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the potential risks.

"The data reviewed by WHO support the conclusion that the known and potential benefits of AZD1222 outweigh the known and potential risk," SAGE said in a set of interim recommendations.

A blood test taken at the time of Covid-19 infection can help determine whether a person is likely to develop long-term Covid, according to new research.

The study, published in the Lancet eBioMedicine journal, analysed proteins in the blood of healthcare workers infected with SARS-CoV-2 and compared them to samples collected from healthcare workers who had not been infected.

Chengdu in southwest China’s Sichuan province has recruited 3,000 key volunteers for the 31st Summer World University Games, or Universiade, from 50,000 applicants in the host city’s 44 colleges and universities.

A total of 50 training courses were offered in five batches for these volunteers. In April, the city launched the first online test for them, with a pass rate of 98 percent.

-- In the face of production shortfalls across the world, some rich countries are hoarding vaccines, leaving poorer ones defenseless in the face of the deadly pathogen. As of mid-January, high-income countries, which represent only 16 percent of the world's population, had taken 60 percent of available doses.

-- Experts said closing the immunity gap is not only about morality and conscience, but also the key to stopping the pandemic by cutting risk of more new variants.

China has granted its first COVID-19 vaccine patent to the adenovirus vector vaccine developed by Chen Wei of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and Chinese biotech company CanSino Biologics, according to the National Intellectual Property Administration.

The patent was submitted for application on March 18, and was approved on Aug 11, according to the patent document.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Four years ago in Davos, President Xi Jinping quoted this famous line of Charles Dickens to describe a world fraught with contradictions. He observed, “On the one hand, with growing material wealth and advances in science and technology, human civilization has developed as never before. On the other hand, frequent regional conflicts, global challenges like terrorism and refugees, as well as poverty, unemployment and widening income gap have all added to the uncertainties of the world.”

Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven richest countries are finally having their first in-person meeting in two years in London, and apparently U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will not miss out on this opportunity to peddle his "China threat" conspiracy.

According to media reports, ministers from those like-minded countries joined a Tuesday morning session dedicated entirely to China, during which, with apparent maneuvering and guidance from the United States, they concluded by accusing China of being "coercive."

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief has sent a letter inviting Chinese experts to participate in a working group pertaining to Japan's disposal of nuclear wastewater, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday.

Confirming the relevant information, spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a daily news briefing that IAEA is actively preparing to assemble the working group after repeated requests from stakeholders such as China and the Republic of Korea (ROK).

Education is a fundamental solution to the intergenerational transmission of poverty, and higher education remains a vital part of the solution.

According to China's Ministry of Education, a total of 5.14 million registered impoverished students have received higher education since November 2012, and the number is growing annually.

The grave epidemic situation in India, the world's largest vaccine producer, the WHO's approval of Chinese vaccines for emergency use, lingering questions on whether the US can really deliver its promise to provide vaccines to the world, all these have led to a widely acknowledged situation that China could be a much more reliable global vaccine supplier, especially as domestic vaccine producers vowed to ramp up production to meet domestic immunity targets and overseas demand.

 China's film authorities will continue to crack down on film copyright infringement to maintain the sound development of the film industry, said a statement issued on the website of the China Film Administration (CFA) on Wednesday.

The statement was released in response to the recent rise in copyright-infringing short videos, such as those featuring synopses of films.

China is exporting COVID-19 vaccines to 27 countries and providing free vaccine aid to 53 countries in need, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.

Wang told a press briefing that vaccine aid from China has arrived in Pakistan, Cambodia, Laos, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Mongolia and Belarus, and that vaccine exports from China have arrived in Serbia, Hungary, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, Senegal, UAE, and Turkey.

China has issued its first batch of forest carbon credit stamps in Sanming City, east China's Fujian Province, in a move to use market mechanisms to reduce carbon emissions.

Forest carbon credits are permits for companies to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. They are converted from added forest areas and the amount of carbon they can capture. The first five stamps issued on Tuesday in Sanming offer forest owners credits for 29,715 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

A few years after the "Clean Your Plate Campaign" launched in 2013, its 2.0 version is arriving. Different from the previous campaign, which was aimed at putting an end to officials' extravagant feasts and receptions, the 2.0 version calls for the public to stop wasting food. The initiative initially sparked speculation by some media over whether China is in a food crisis. Experts say the world indeed faces a food shorage, but for China, the real threat to food security comes more from food wastage than epidemic or floods.

President Xi Jinping stressed the need to maintain a sense of crisis on food security despite the consecutive bumper harvests, and urged the establishment of a long-term mechanism to stop wasting food amid the fallout from the epidemic.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that food wastage is shocking and distressing, and that it is necessary to further enhance public awareness of the issue, cultivate thrifty habits, and foster a social environment where waste is shameful and thriftiness is good.

Despite media hype that China is in a looming food crisis, which is worsened by the epidemic, floods in southern China, and food imports, Chinese agriculturalists said the above factors will not lead to a food crisis in China, but that wasting food is an issue that deserves more attention.

China's food security was not seriously affected by COVID-19, and China's grain reserves are ample, Zheng Fengtian, a professor at Renmin University of China's School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, told the Global Times on Wednesday.