Coronavirus: Nature magazine apologises for reports linking Covid-19 with China

Scientific journal admits it ‘was an error on our part’ to erroneously link the pathogen with Wuhan and China

‘It would be tragic if stigma, fuelled by the coronavirus, led Asia’s young people to retreat from international campuses,’ it says

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Nature magazine said that continuing to associate a virus with a specific place is irresponsible and needs to stop. Photo: AFP

Published: 10:15pm, 9 Apr 2020Updated: 11:25pm, 10 Apr 2020

British scientific journal Nature has apologised for associating Covid-19 with China in its reporting, saying that early coverage of the global health crisis by itself and other media had led to racist attacks on people of Asian descent around the world.

In an article published on Tuesday, the publication said that the World Health Organisation’s announcement on February 11 that the official name for the pneumonia-like virus would be Covid-19 had been an implicit reminder to “those who had erroneously been associating the virus with Wuhan and with China in their news coverage – including Nature”.

“That we did so was an error on our part, for which we take responsibility and apologise,” it said.

“It’s clear that since the outbreak was first reported, people of Asian descent around the world have been subjected to racist attacks, with untold human costs – for example, on their health and livelihoods.”

The article said that while it had been common for viral diseases to be associated with the areas in which outbreaks had occurred – like Middle East respiratory syndrome and the Zika virus, which was named after a Ugandan forest – the WHO had introduced guidelines in 2015 to reduce the negative impact of such labelling on people from those areas.

The impact of a stigmatised virus name would have “worrying implications” for students from China and other countries in Asia, “hurting the diversity of university campuses and diversity of points of view in academia”, it said.