Health News (Reuters)

Swiss drugmaker Roche aims by next month to offer blood tests to identify those who had been infected with the coronavirus, potentially helping inform locked-down nations of who might have some immunity and be able to resume work or contact with the public.

Germany's confirmed coronavirus cases have risen by 3,380 to 133,830, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday, marking a third straight day of new infections accelerating.

Thailand on Friday reported 28 new coronavirus cases and one more death, an 85-year-old woman who had other health complications.

Gilead Sciences Inc's shares surged 16% in after hours trading on Thursday following a media report detailing encouraging partial data from trials of the U.S. company's experimental drug remdesivir in severe COVID-19 patients.

China's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, said on Friday it had revised up its total coronavirus death toll by 1,290, according to state-run CCTV.

New Zealand justified its tough lockdown policies despite a significant drop in the number of coronavirus cases on Friday, with officials citing two new deaths as evidence of the risk from lifting social restrictions too soon.

Mainland China reported on Friday that new confirmed cases of the coronavirus fell to a two-week low, as infections involving travellers arriving from abroad sharply fell.

Honduran Health Minister Alba Consuelo Flores said on Thursday that a Cuban medical brigade would join local medics in the fight against the novel coronavirus as it spreads in the poor Central American country.

Moderna Inc said on Thursday that it received a $483 million contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to accelerate the development of its vaccine candidate for the novel coronavirus.

Mexican Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell said on Thursday that the country might have as many as 55,951 people infected with the fast-spreading novel coronavirus, twice the estimated number reported last week.

Britain extended its nationwide lockdown on Thursday as stand-in leader Dominic Raab ordered Britons to stay at home for at least another three weeks to prevent the spread of a coronavirus outbreak which has already claimed over 138,000 lives globally.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday spun synthetic swabs could be used for coronavirus testing by collecting a sample from the front of the nose.

New Jersey's governor on Thursday ordered a probe into long-term care facilities after a "makeshift morgue" was found at a nursing home devastated by the novel coronavirus, raising questions about the death toll at homes for the elderly.

U.S. coronavirus deaths rose above 33,000 on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, even as President Donald Trump laid out White House guidelines for reopening the economy.

Republican U.S. lawmakers echoed President Donald Trump's criticism of the World Health Organization on Thursday, with some suggesting he withhold aid until the U.N. agency's director general resigns while others called for an international investigation of its handling of the coronavirus.

Vice President Mike Pence said on Thursday that he expects more than 5 million Americans will have been tested for the novel coronavirus by the end of April.

Canada's Pacific province of British Columbia was already battling an opioid epidemic when the new coronavirus hit, compounding the threat to drug users, many of whom are homeless and particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.

On March 21, two days after President Donald Trump first touted chloroquine drugs as a “gamechanger” in the fight against COVID-19, administration officials privately described what they felt was a “win” in the president’s efforts to build an emergency stockpile of the drugs: a hefty donation of pills from Bayer AG.

Sweeping testing of the entire crew of the coronavirus-stricken U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt may have revealed a clue about the pandemic: The majority of the positive cases so far are among sailors who are asymptomatic, officials say.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration cautioned on Thursday that with a lot of its staff allocated to the coronavirus crisis, it may not be able to sustain its current level of timely reviews and approvals of marketing applications.