Frustrated with the lagging pace of vaccinations at home, well-off Latin Americans have been flying north for a shot and feeling guilty about those left behind.
A growing storm over the origins in China of Covid-19 has explosive political implications for the United States at home and abroad, as well as the dueling legacies of two presidents that will be defined by the pandemic.
President Joe Biden has directed US intelligence agencies to investigate the origins of Covid-19, as international health officials and scientists call for a more in-depth examination of a theory that the deadly virus was accidentally leaked from a lab in China.
Researchers in a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in central China s Hubei province.(AP)
It will fan doubts about the World Health Organisation s capacity to tease out lessons from the current crisis in order to prevent future pandemics.
In the US, it leaves both the former Trump administration and the Biden White House facing calls for transparency about their efforts to establish how the virus started and whether politics tainted their investigative efforts.Â
If it turns out the virus did escape from a laboratory, former President Donald Trump may be able to claim some vindication.Â
But it would also highlight how his repeated habit of trashing the truth and bending intelligence to suit his own political ends shattered his credibility on this and other issues.