Pandemics News

As the death toll and economic cost of the COVID-19 crisis mounts, calls are mounting to ban the trade in wild animals for human consumption, believed to have sparked the…

Environmental degradation has already triggered disease outbreaks in Brazil. The risk of a new emergent zoonotic disease arising there, like COVID-19, is intensified by Bolsonaro’s forest policies.

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we discuss what it means to be celebrating the 50th Earth Day amidst the coronavirus pandemic. Listen here:   The first Earth Day…

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the world’s highest coastal mountain range, is an isolated massif in northern Colombia. Due to its unique geography, the steep mountain slopes ascend through…

The only positive effect of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic is that it has generated public awareness of the risks of emerging diseases. One may hope that this will result in…

LAMONGAN/JAKARTA, Indonesia — At a fishing port in eastern Java, fisherman Muhammad Fauzi was unloading his catch after spending days out at sea. He still goes fishing even though sales…

Christian fundamentalist Andrew Tonkin is allegedly planning to contact and convert isolated Brazilian Amazon indigenous people, according to Marubo and Mayoruna indigenous leaders.

A supposed COVID-19 test for a possibly infected Marubo indigenous man in Atalaia do Norte — gateway to the vast Javari Valley Indigenous Territory — was never analyzed; so results remain unknown.

JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have ordered a temporary closure of dozens of national parks and conservation sites to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus that has killed thousands of…

Indigenous activists have blasted Jair Bolsonaro’s ineffectual coronavirus response, as leaders cancel annual mass indigenous protest in Brasília; fear grows of virus spread to reserves.

Air pollution has significantly decreased over China amid the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, signaling unanticipated implications for human health. “Given the huge amount of evidence that breathing…

Every day for the past week or so, I have woken up only to find a daily dose of more than 300 messages on my mobile phone. Piled up overnight…

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — As the coronavirus pandemic continues its deadly onslaught around the world, the Vietnamese government has moved to ban the wildlife trade. Amid scientific theories…

Ethnos360 missionaries have purchased a helicopter as part of a plan to contact and convert isolated Amazon indigenous groups, putting them at grave risk of deadly infectious disease.

The World Health Organization has categorized the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic in light of its spread around the world. Ever since the first cases emerged in the…

MANILA — Governments across Southeast Asia have vowed to strengthen cooperation in curbing the illegal wildlife trade, suspected to have sparked the novel coronavirus epidemic. The issue will be at…

China has banned the trade and consumption of wild animals in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that has claimed more than 2,700 lives and infected more than 81,000 people,…

JAMBI, Indonesia — Agus, a shrimp fisherman, sits pensively outside his home in Jambi, a province in Indonesia’s Sumatra Island. He’s among thousands of fishermen who, for several weeks now,…

HO CHI MINH CITY — As an outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has raged in its northern neighbor China over the past several weeks, Vietnam has been impacted…

A surfeit of disinformation is hampering public health efforts to contain and counter the coronavirus disease before it turns into a fully-fledged global pandemic. Various conspiracy theories are circulating about…

The death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak, the disease now called COVID-19, crossed the 1,000 mark this week as confirmed cases surpassed 60,000, but it remains unclear how the…

What do the coronavirus, HIV, and the impending extinction of the world’s rhinoceroses have in common? The answer is that they are all a result of the wildlife trade, a…

Conservationists are welcoming news that the Chinese Government has temporarily banned the sale of wildlife in markets, restaurants and over e-commerce as part of an effort to contain the Coronavirus…