Health

Authorities in Beijing have temporarily shut a major wholesale agricultural market following a rise in locally transmitted novel coronavirus infections in China's capital city over the past two days.

A Beijing district official said on Saturday the district was in "wartime emergency mode" following a spike in novel coronavirus cases centered around a major wholesale market there.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 348 to 186,022, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Saturday.

The top U.S. infectious disease official, Dr. Anthony Fauci, on Friday cautioned that the "blips" of rising coronavirus hospitalizations being reported by some states could get out of control if robust contact tracing regimes are not put in place.

China reported 11 new COVID-19 cases and seven asymptomatic cases for June 12, the national health authority said on Saturday.

U.S. health officials on Friday urged Americans to continue adhering to social distancing and other COVID-19 safety measures, and warned that states may need to reimpose strict restrictions if COVID-19 cases spike.

Mexico's health ministry reported a record 5,222 new confirmed coronavirus infections along with 504 additional fatalities on Friday, bringing the total in the country to 139,196 cases and 16,448 deaths.

New research offers reassuring evidence to hundreds of millions of people with high blood pressure that popular anti-hypertension drugs do not put them at greater risk from COVID-19 as some experts had feared.

About one in five of Britain's patients with COVID-19 caught the disease while in hospital, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, citing papers by government scientists.

A series of studies in mice of Moderna Inc's COVID-19 lent some assurance that it may not increase the risk of more severe disease, and that one dose may provide protection against the novel coronavirus, according to preliminary data released on Friday.

Egypt on Friday confirmed 1,577 new coronavirus cases, the health ministry said, the highest daily increase in almost two weeks.

Brazil's COVID-19 death toll overtook Britain's on Friday to become the second highest in the world after the United States, according to numbers released by the Brazilian Health Ministry.

Requiring the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus in areas at the epicenter of the global pandemic may have prevented tens of thousands of infections, a new study suggests.

About half a dozen U.S. states including Texas and Arizona are grappling with a rising number of coronavirus patients filling hospital beds, fanning concerns that the reopening of the U.S. economy may spark a second wave of infections.

Botswana brought back a strict coronavirus lockdown in its capital city, Gaborone, and surrounding areas after the southern African country recorded 12 new cases of the virus, a senior health official said late on Friday.

The Americas are bearing the brunt of the global coronavirus pandemic at present, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, with North and South America currently having four of the 10 worst hit countries in the world.

Fears of a second wave of COVID-19 infections shut six major food markets in Beijing on Friday, while India, which opened up this week, recorded a record daily increase and half a dozen U.S. states said their hospital beds were filling up fast.

The following is a brief roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug to treat infants and children with HIV, with the drug having been developed by drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline's HIV drugs division ViiV Healthcare, the FDA and the GSK unit said.

France reported on Friday that the number of people who died from coronavirus infection over the past 24 hours increased by just 28 to 29,374, the third day the toll remained under 30 and the lowest three-day toll since lockdown started in mid-March.