Still unexplained
The hunt for the origins of Covid-19 has for the past four years been a tangled web of politics, power struggles, and international finger-pointing.
US Vice President Mike Pence chose not to wear a face mask during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, an apparent violation of the world-renowned medical centre’s policy requiring them.
According to the video feeds, Pence did not wear a mask when he met with a Mayo employee who has recovered from COVID-19 and is now donating plasma, even though everyone else in the room appeared to be wearing one. He was also maskless when he visited a lab where Mayo conducts coronavirus tests.
The Vice President was the only participant not to wear a mask during a roundtable discussion on Mayo’s coronavirus testing and research programs.
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Taking to Twitter, Mayo said that it had informed the Pence of its mask policy prior to his arrival.
The United States cases of the novel coronavirus topped 1 million on Tuesday, having doubled in 18 days, and making up one-third of all infections in the world, according to a Reuters tally.
More than 56,500 Americans have died of the highly contagious respiratory illness Covid-19 caused by the virus, an average of about 2,000 a day this month, according to the tally.
Globally, coronavirus cases top 3 million since the outbreak began in China late last year.
The United States, with the world’s third-largest population, has five times as many cases as the next hardest-hit countries of Italy, Spain and France.
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