Health

South Korean contract drugs manufacturer Samsung Biologics Co Ltd said on Friday it had signed a deal worth more than $231 million with GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) to supply biopharmaceutical products over the next eight years.

The United States has secured almost a third of the first 1 billion doses planned for AstraZeneca's experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion, as world powers scramble for medicines to get their economies back to work.

Technology companies are developing their own contact tracing systems to help prevent coronavirus outbreaks in their offices as countries begin to ease lockdown measures and a return to the workplace is in the offing.

China recorded four new coronavirus cases on May 21, up from two a day earlier, the National Health Commission (NHC) reported on Friday.

Mexican health authorities on Thursday reported 2,973 more coronavirus cases, a daily record for new infections, bringing the country's total tally to 59,567 cases.

Fifty-nine migrants in Panamanian migration centers have tested positive for the coronavirus, a health official said, as thousands of migrants in the Central American nation wait to advance on their journey north.

The University of Alabama will require students and staff returning to its three campuses in the coming months to submit online health checks regularly and encourage them to download its contact tracing app, officials told Reuters on Thursday.

Brazil registered a record of 1,188 daily coronavirus deaths on Thursday, with more than 20,000 total fatalities from the coronavirus outbreak, the Health Ministry said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a sublingual film from Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc, a unit of Japan-based Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma , for the treatment of "off" episodes in patients with Parkinson's disease, the company said.

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, a long-running advocate of malaria drug chloroquine to treat COVID-19, said on Thursday he knew there was no proof it works, but said there are cases in which it appears to have been successful.

Abbott Laboratories on Thursday said an analysis of data from an ongoing study of its ID NOW rapid test, which is used in the White House and elsewhere to spot COVID-19, shows it is highly accurate when compared with industry-standard tests.

U.S. doctors and others in the scientific community are calling for the release of data that convinced health regulators to authorize emergency use of Gilead Sciences Inc's antiviral drug remdesivir to treat COVID-19, so they can direct limited supplies on the right patients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday identified 27 coronavirus antibody tests that should no longer be sold in the United States, following up on new regulations meant to weed out dubious tests and players that had entered the country under loose rules set in March.

A quarter of Americans have little or no interest in taking a coronavirus vaccine, a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Thursday found, with some voicing concern that the record pace at which vaccine candidates are being developed could compromise safety.

Argentina, which has enforced one of the world's toughest travel bans against the coronavirus, plans to help charter a private flight to bring in rabbis from Israel to certify meat at the country's packing plants for kosher markets around the world.

Daily new hospitalizations across New York state for the novel coronavirus are below rates seen prior to its March lockdown, further evidence the state hit hardest by the pandemic has turned the corner, New York Governor Andrew said on Thursday.

Spain's daily death toll from the coronavirus fell below 50 on Thursday for the first time since a lockdown was imposed in mid-March, but the figure excludes deaths in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

Health secretary Matt Hancock said on Thursday he was confident that a COVID-19 track and trace system would be operating by June 1, allowing lockdown rules to be eased without risking a spike in infections.

The United Nations rejected on Thursday an accusation by the United States that the world body was using the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to promote access to abortion through its humanitarian response to the deadly global outbreak.

The growth rate of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in France slowed slightly on Thursday, with health authorities reporting an additional 318 known infections, an increase of 0.2% over 24 hours.