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The European Commission on Thursday warned Europe's telecoms providers against blocking content providers as they try to ease the strain on their networks caused by house-bound Europeans teleworking or video streaming due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Microsoft Corp's Teams chat and conferencing app gained more than 12 million daily users in one week, a 37.5% jump as more people worked from home during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said on Thursday.

The world's wealthiest nations poured unprecedented aid into the reeling global economy on Thursday as coronavirus cases ballooned in the current epicentre Europe and London became the latest major center bracing for lockdown.

General Electric's healthcare unit said on Thursday it will hire more people and increase the number of shifts as it races to produce ventilators round-the-clock to meet the surge in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Netherlands has risen by 409 to a total of 2,460, Dutch health authorities said in their daily update on Thursday, with 18 new deaths.

A summit of Southeast Asian and other international leaders scheduled in Vietnam early next month has been postponed until end-June due to worries about coronavirus, Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday.

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday that Teams, its chat and conferencing app, reached 32 million users as of March 11 amid a surge in remote work by companies around the world in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Restrictions imposed by some European Union countries at their borders with other member states in response to the coronavirus outbreak are disrupting food supplies, representatives of the industry and farmers said on Thursday.

Israel's Quantum Machines, which developed hardware and software for the operation of quantum computers, said on Thursday it has raised $17.5 million in early stage funding.

Germany wants to double the number of hospital beds available from their current level of 500,000 in order to cope with the coronavirus epidemic, the defense minister said.

The prime minister in the Netherlands has offered reassurances amid the global coronavirus outbreak: telling citizens on Thursday there is no shortage of toilet paper.

The number of coronavirus cases in Switzerland and Liechtenstein has risen to 3,888, Swiss health authorities said on Thursday, with 33 people reported to have died from the disease.

Activist investor Starboard Value said on Thursday it has nominated four directors to eBay Inc's board and urged the e-commerce firm to look for external candidates for the chief executive officer role.

The European Commission decided on Thursday to set up a stockpile of face masks, intensive care equipment and other essential medical gear to tackle shortages in Europe in the face of booming demand caused by the coronavirus crisis.

China and the epicenter of its coronavirus outbreak, Wuhan city, have reported no new domestic transmissions for the first time, raising hopes that strict containment efforts to stop the spread of the virus are working.

Croatia registered its first death of a person infected with the coronavirus, the state public health institute said on the official government web page for the crisis.

The German military is making preparations to help with efforts to tackle the coronavirus crisis should other civil servant organisations become overwhelmed with the outbreak, Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Thursday.

Israel's attorney general on Thursday approved for the first time the use of a generic version of a patent-protected drug to treat coronavirus patients.

On Sunday morning, a viral outbreak in the Dutch city of Utrecht infected more than 60 people in less than hour. Unlike the coronavirus, however, the infection happened on WhatsApp.

Three people employed by the U.S. diplomatic mission in Geneva have contracted coronavirus, but are in "good condition", a spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday, declining to give specifics.