Health News (Reuters)

Japanese trading house Itochu said on Thursday that it will recall cloth face masks and tighten inspections of them following reports of defects in masks the government has delivered to households, although it is not known if Itochu's products were among those tainted.

Scientists are baffled by how the coronavirus attacks the body - killing many patients while barely affecting others.

Nearly 50 out of over 600 crew members on an Italian cruise ship docked for repairs in Japan's Nagasaki have tested positive for the coronavirus, raising concern about the strain on the city's hospitals if conditions worsen for those infected.

China's agriculture ministry said on Thursday it will start taking samples from horses along its southern borders to check for African horse sickness after the deadly disease was detected in Thailand.

The Swiss death toll from the new coronavirus has reached 1,268, the country's public health agency said on Thursday, rising from 1,217 people on Wednesday.

Britain's AstraZeneca is testing a diabetes drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19 patients who also had existing heart and kidney problems, its second trial of an approved therapy to help treat the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Workers in the port of Antwerp will next month begin testing wristbands developed by a Belgian technology company that could help guarantee the social distancing required during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was called on by President Donald Trump on Wednesday to walk back his remark that the second wave of novel coronavirus in the fall could be worse than the current situation.

Two cats have become the first pet animals in the United States to test positive for COVID-19, caused by the new coronavirus, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

At homeless shelters across the United States where only a few cases of COVID-19 had been identified, testing found much more widespread infection among residents and staff with the novel coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Britain's government plans to test a sample of 20,000 English households for COVID-19 in the coming weeks to try to establish how far the disease has spread across the country.

On January 21, the day the first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the disease as it ravaged China. Alex Azar, a 52-year-old lawyer and former drug industry executive, assured Americans the U.S. government was prepared.

The ousted director of a key U.S. agency charged with developing drugs to fight the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday said he was dismissed because he called for careful vetting of a treatment frequently touted by President Donald Trump.

The novel coronavirus circulated in January in California, weeks earlier than thought, and early deaths were likely mistaken for the flu, a county health official said on Wednesday.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that he hoped the Trump administration would reconsider its suspension of funding, but that his main focus was on ending the pandemic and saving lives.

The United States will assess if the World Health Organization is being run properly following President Donald Trump's pause in U.S. funding to the global body, the acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said on Wednesday.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that he hoped the Trump administration would reconsider its suspension of funding, but that his main focus was on ending the pandemic and saving lives.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday applauded steps by a handful of Republican-led U.S. states to reopen their economies, but New York's governor, wary of a potential second wave of coronavirus infections, cautioned that it was "no time to act stupidly."

The Republican leader of the U.S. Senate said on Wednesday that Congress may decide to provide additional assistance to state and local government as part of another coronavirus relief bill, but that any aid needs to focus on the pandemic.

U.S. coronavirus deaths topped 47,000 on Wednesday after rising by a near-record single-day number the previous day, according to a Reuters tally.