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More than half the U.S. House of Representatives could return to the capitol on Thursday to pass a coronavirus relief bill that would fund small business loans and hospital aid, chamber's second-most powerful Democrat said on Tuesday, adding he thinks both parties would approve the legislation.

About 500 people entered self-isolation in staff quarters of India's presidential palace on Tuesday, and Pakistan's prime minister was due to be tested, as the coronavirus spreading through South Asia hit the heart of the region's governments.

A group of firms, including Airbus and Ford, could build more than the current government order of 20,000 ventilators and continue once normal operations begin to resume, the head of the project told Reuters on Tuesday.

Around one-third of Stockholm's 1 million people will have had the novel coronavirus by the start of May and the disease may have already passed its peak in the capital, Sweden's public health agency said on Tuesday.

The number of people in hospital with COVID-19 has started to decline in London but not elsewhere in the United Kingdom, England's Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam said on Tuesday.

Turkey's confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease increased by 4,611 in the past 24 hours, and 119 more people have died, taking the death toll to 2,259, Health Ministry data showed on Tuesday.

Global coronavirus infections surpassed 2.5 million on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, with U.S. cases nearing 800,000.

A new Moscow hospital built in just over a month began admitting patients infected with the new coronavirus on Tuesday to help the Russian capital cope with a growing number of cases that have stretched its medical infrastructure.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized at-home sample collection for LabCorp's COVID-19 diagnostic kit, the agency said on Tuesday, allowing patients to send in their nasal swab samples to the company's labs for diagnosis.

Bitcoin has fared better than stocks but worse than gold and U.S. Treasuries during the coronavirus pandemic, with investors ascribing its performance to speculative bets and bids to hedge against inflation linked to stimulus measures.

When Singapore launched the first smartphone app of its kind last month to identify and alert people who had interacted with carriers of the novel coronavirus, the city-state of roughly 5.7 million people had 385 cases of infections.

Britain's government made a firm decision to allow China's Huawei to have a role in building the country's 5G phone network and as far as the foreign ministry's top official understands it is not being reopened, he said on Tuesday.

The coronavirus crisis has seen millions locked in their homes turn to videoconferencing apps, bringing with it question marks over security and privacy and a new verb - Zoombombing - the practice of uninvited users crashing into conversations.

(This April 20 story corrects company name to TCS in fourth paragraph)

Investors are once again crowding into a narrow range of technology and internet stocks, heightening concerns that the market's dramatic bounce from last month's lows is becoming increasingly vulnerable to sharp reversals as the coronavirus outbreak continues to batter the economy.

The Swiss death toll from the new coronavirus has reached 1,187, the country's public health agency said on Tuesday, rising from 1,142 people on Monday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that all available evidence suggests that the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China late last year and it was not manipulated or constructed in a lab.

Thailand's cabinet approved a second automatic visa extension for foreigners for three more months on Tuesday, in a bid to prevent long queues at immigration centres and stem the spread of the coronavirus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that all available evidence suggests that the novel coronavirus originated in bats in China late last year and it was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory.

Japan will decide during its Golden Week holiday between April 29 and May 6 whether to extend its month-long state of emergency to fight a widening coronavirus outbreak, government and ruling party sources told Reuters on Tuesday.