Health

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday reported 1,551,095 cases of the new coronavirus, an increase of 22,860 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 1,397 to 93,061.

Britain said on Thursday it had agreed to acquire over 10 million coronavirus antibody tests from Roche and Abbott which would be rolled out to health and care workers from next week.

Britain's health minister said the health service's COVID-19 smartphone app was working on the Isle of Wight, where it is being trialled, and the country's test and trace operation would be ready to launch on June 1 when the lockdown is further eased.

Britain will buy 10 million coronavirus antibody tests from Roche and Abbott and will roll them out to health workers from next week, health minister Matt Hancock said on Thursday.

Lebanon's Health Ministry reported 63 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, the largest single-day increase since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The number of countries that have reported cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome linked to COVID-19 and impacting children has nearly doubled in the past week to 13, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told a daily briefing on Thursday.

Italy recorded 156 new deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic on Thursday, against 161 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases also declined slightly to 642 from 665 on Wednesday.

A U.S. Air Force plane delivered a first batch of medical aid including 50 ventilators to Russia on Thursday to help it cope with a rising number of coronavirus cases and deaths.

Healthcare workers in Britain and Thailand have started taking part in a trial to determine whether two anti-malarial drugs can prevent COVID-19, including one that U.S. President Donald Trump says he has been taking.

Singapore's health ministry said on Thursday it confirmed another 448 coronavirus cases, taking the city-state's tally of infections to 29,812.

Britain's system for tracing those with the novel coronavirus was under fire on Thursday as it grappled with the development of a tracking app and health workers warned the government that unless there was clarity it could suffer a second deadly wave.

The United Kingdom's death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose by 338 to 36,042 as of 1600 GMT on May 20, the health ministry said.

Britain has agreed a deal to acquire antibody tests, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday, saying the tests would be free and health and care workers would be prioritised.

CVS Health Corp said on Thursday it was expanding drive-through testing sites for COVID-19 to 350 locations in 14 U.S. states with an aim to open 1,000 sites nationwide by the end of May.

The main coronavirus treatment centre in southern Yemen has recorded at least 68 deaths in just over two weeks, the medical charity running the site said on Thursday, more than double the toll announced by Yemeni authorities so far.

Thailand on Thursday reported three new coronavirus infections and no new deaths, bringing the total to 3,037 confirmed cases and 56 fatalities since the outbreak started in January.

Medical researchers in the Netherlands have signed up 1,500 people who have recovered from the new coronavirus to donate blood as part of an international push to develop a treatment for the virus from their plasma.

A shopping mall in Singapore is deploying a newly developed smart robot to fight the novel coronavirus, not with chemicals - but with light.

Nearly one in six Spanish children have felt regularly depressed during the coronavirus crisis, with those from poorer backgrounds suffering worse, a charity said on Thursday.

The city of Wuhan, the original epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak in China, conducted 887,321 nucleic acid tests on May 20, the local health authority said on Thursday, compared with 856,128 a day earlier.