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South America has become a new epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic with Brazil hardest-hit, while cases are rising in some African countries that so far have a relatively low death toll, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

When a man in Seoul tested positive for the new coronavirus in May, South Korean authorities were able to confirm his wide-ranging movements in and outside the city in minutes, including five bars and clubs he visited on a recent night out.

The United States called on the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday to begin work immediately on investigating the source of the novel coronavirus, as well as its handling of the response to the pandemic.

A coronavirus vaccine tested for the first time in humans is safe and induces a rapid immune response, researchers at China's CanSino Biologics Inc reported on Friday in The Lancet medical journal.

Data from millions of mobile phones shows varying behavior across the United States in May as people responded to the loosening of stay-at-home orders, a Reuters analysis shows.

Italy recorded 130 new deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic on Friday against 156 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases rose marginally to 652 from 642 on Thursday.

Oxford University and AstraZeneca are recruiting around 10,000 adults and children in Britain for trials of an experimental coronavirus vaccine, a day after receiving U.S. backing worth up to $1.2 billion.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Friday reported forecast-beating fourth-quarter revenues and profits, as more people shopped online for essentials because of the coronavirus lockdowns.

Once held up as a role model for its battle against the coronavirus, Singapore has struggled to contain an infection spread centred around foreign worker dormitories, construction sites and factories.

Spain's overnight death toll from the new coronavirus rose by 56 on Friday to a total of 28,628, the health ministry said.

Sinovac Biotech Ltd said on Friday it had started mid-stage human trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine in China earlier this month.

Some 80 million children worldwide could be at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases like diphtheria, measles and polio due to disruption of routine immunisation during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.N. agencies and the GAVI vaccine alliance said on Friday.

The coronavirus mortality rate among some of the poorest Catalans is five times higher than among the wealthiest residents of the Spanish region, a study showed, in the latest evidence of how COVID-19 hits the needy hardest.

Thailand will maintain its state of emergency over the coronavirus until the end of June, its COVID-19 task force said on Friday, in an effort to keep infections under control as the government prepares to ease restrictions further.

Britain should have learned more from other countries who were tackling coronavirus outbreaks earlier, the head of NHS England Simon Stevens said on Friday, acknowledging that not everything with the response had gone perfectly.

Children have milder COVID-19 symptoms than adults and the balance of evidence suggests they may also have lower susceptibility and infectivity than adults, scientists advising the British government have said.

President Vladimir Putin told officials on Friday to ramp up testing for the new coronavirus, but said Russia's outbreak was stabilising even as the death toll rose by a record one-day amount.

The United Kingdom's death toll from confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose by 351 to 36,393 as of 1600 GMT on May 21, the health ministry said.

Chinese technology company NetEase plans to carry out a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on June 11, which will be followed one week later by web retailer JD.com , four sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

China's Pinduoduo Inc beat first-quarter revenue estimates on Friday as more people shopped on its e-commerce platform during coronavirus lockdowns that have shut most brick-and-mortar outlets.