Dust settles around origin of pandemic — sabotage! (5)
I believe the answer is:
spoil
'sabotage' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'dust settles around origin of pandemic' is the wordplay.
'dust settles' becomes 'soil' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'around' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'origin of' suggests taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'pandemic' is 'p'.
'soil' enclosing 'p' is 'SPOIL'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for spoil that I've seen before include "Booty" , "Diminish or destroy the value or quality" , "Cook" , "Earth from excavation" , "Impair" .)