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The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating in Africa, spreading to rural areas after international travellers brought it to capital cities, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.

Moderna Inc on Thursday confirmed it plans to start a trial of 30,000 volunteers of its much-anticipated coronavirus vaccine in July as the company enters the final stage of testing.

England's test and trace system identified 31,794 people who had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for COVID-19 in its first week of operation, the government said on Thursday.

The European Commission is seeking a mandate from EU governments to buy in advance from pharmaceutical firms up to six promising vaccines against the coronavirus, two officials told Reuters.

Governments around the world have spent $10 trillion in fiscal actions to respond to the novel coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout, but significant further efforts are needed, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Thursday.

Paraguay's coronavirus camps, obligatory for anyone entering the South American country, have garnered praise from international health bodies for helping stem the spread of the epidemic. The government calls them the "first line of defense".

From apple packing houses in Washington state to farm workers in Florida and a California county known as "the world's salad bowl," outbreaks of the novel coronavirus are emerging at U.S. fruit and vegetable farms and packing plants.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc said on Thursday it signed an $87 million deal to make AstraZeneca Plc's experimental COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, boosting the British drugmaker's efforts to bring a vaccine to the market.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc on Thursday said it has begun human testing of its experimental antibody cocktail as a treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

China is offering candidate vaccines for the new coronavirus to employees at state-owned firms travelling overseas, as it seeks more data on their efficacy, state media Global Times reported on Thursday.

England's new track and tracing system was able to contact two thirds of the people who tested positive for COVID-19 and were referred to it in its first week, and then succeeded in contacting 85% of their contacts to ask them to self isolate.

Britain's Department of Health said its coronavirus tracing system contacted 31,794 people between 28 May and 3 June and of those it was able to reach 26,985, or 85%, and advise them to self-isolate.

England's COVID-19 Trace and Track is functioning effectively nationwide even though it can still be improved, program leader Dido Harding said after the first numbers of people tested and contacts traced were published.

Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

The European Union is planning on filing formal antitrust charges against Amazon.com Inc over its treatment of third-party sellers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

An outside panel will weigh the validity of an investigation into Samsung Group heir Jay Y. Lee over a 2015 merger and alleged accounting fraud, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office said on Thursday.

Tech companies including Facebook , Google and Microsoft on Thursday pledged to improve and standardise annual disclosures around online child exploitation, as they fight off moves to limit encryption.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Thursday that it was "very regrettable" that Taiwan was not accepted to take part as an observer at the World Health Organization assembly last month.

Facebook has yet to find evidence that user-reported accounts that proliferated in the Philippines at the weekend had engaged in malicious and coordinated acts, the world's biggest social network said on Thursday.

Russia on Thursday rolled out a drug approved to treat patients suffering from the novel coronavirus, its state financial backer said, as the number of infections there surpassed half a million.