WHO team visits Chinese animal market linked to COVID-19 origin⁣, South Africa Orders 20m Pfizer Vaccines⁣

German doctors and their staff have been facing aggression and threats from vaccine opponents. They have described having frayed nerves as pandemic fatigue sets in among patients and medical staff.

The High Court in South Africa has ruled that the former president be allowed to appeal a decision setting aside medical parole. Last week it was decided he should return to jail.

Press freedom in Africa has suffered in 2021 due to growing authoritarianism and insecurity, especially in East Africa – the region most hostile to journalists on the continent.

Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Thursday.⁣

The court has agreed to hear arguments about the Biden administration's vaccine or testing requirement for large employers, and a separate vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

The head of the World Health Organization says rich countries are merely prolonging the pandemic by fueling vaccine inequality. "No country can boost its way out of the pandemic," he says.

Instead, mRNA vaccines use mRNA created in a laboratory to teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.

Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Friday.⁣⁣

The African sides that qualified for the 2022 Amputee Football World Cup are facing challenges. Liberia, Angola, Tanzania and Morocco will play in the tournament in Istanbul in October 2022.

Amid a global pandemic that’s threatening lives and livelihoods, politics instead seem infused with culture clashes and identity wars. Why is so much of the conversation in the run-up to France’s presidential election about outsourced industry and loss of identity? Where’s the left? In uncertain times, when citizens want a state that protects them, many arguments center around which side is more elitist. Are we looking at a breakdown of the social contract?

2021 brought big changes to households and businesses around the world. In the last show of the season, Stephen Carroll and Kate Moody take a look at some of the biggest business and economic stories of the year and how they might evolve in 2022.

Find these stories and much more when you grab a copy of The Guardian on Saturday.⁣