On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel and governors of the 16 states agreed to further loosen the rules, albeit with a fallback clause.

US Vice-President Mike Pence has also tested negative.

Trump and Putin spoke by phone, also discussing the global coronavirus pandemic, the White House said.

Coronavirus cases have been registered in all of Russia's 85 regions, with Moscow the worst affected by far with 92,676.

COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets or contact and the virus has also been detected in feces, saliva and urine.

The US needs it for all of the epidemiological work that needs to be done to protect Americans today and tomorrow, Pompeo asserted.

The major cruise lines are accused of failing to do enough to get their staff home, ostensibly to save money on pricey charter flights – a claim the companies deny.

During a meeting with the governor of Texas in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump told reporters he had little contact with the man and would be tested daily going forward. Neither Trump nor Pence wore masks during the meeting.

Last week, US President Trump threatened new tariffs against China after claiming there was evidence linking Covid-19 to a top-security lab in Wuhan.

Croatia's Defense Ministry says an air force training plane crashed in the southwest of the country, killing two crew members.

The virus that causes COVID-19 can be found in semen, Chinese researchers report in a small study that doesn't address whether sexual transmission is possible. Doctors detected the virus in semen from six of 38 men hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19. Four were still very sick with the disease while two were recovering.

Alejandra has not heard anything from the state -- though she has gotten a fundraising email from Republican Senator Rick Scott, who set up the current unemployment system during his tenure as governor.

Hydroxychloroquine did not lower the risk of dying or needing a breathing tube in a comparison that involved nearly 1,400 patients treated at Columbia University in New York, researchers reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The findings indicated that a decreased sense of smell may be an indicator of patients early in the disease course as well as those who may go on to develop more severe symptoms.

Large-scale parades that had been envisaged to commemorate the victory over the Nazis have been downsized as the world grapples with coronavirus crisis.

Controversial Pakistani cleric Mufti Abdul Qavi made the comments in an interview with an online portal when he was asked to respond to some fatwa allegedly issued by clerics in Saudi Arabia that beverages containing 40 per cent alcohol or less are halal (permissible).

In the third phase of its reopening plan, Denmark will also increase the maximum number of people allowed to meet in public to between 30 and 50, up from a 10-person limit.

Singapore on Friday reported 768 new cases of coronavirus, mostly among the foreign nationals living in dormitories, taking the total number of infections in the country to 21,707 with 20 deaths, the health ministry said.

On May 8, 1980, representatives of all World Health Organization (WHO) member states gathered in Geneva and officially declared that the smallpox-causing variola virus had been relegated to the history books, two centuries after the discovery of a vaccine.

As European countries begin to ease their restrictions on public life at a varied pace, with some allowing businesses to reopen while others remain on lockdown, the different rules are sowing confusion for travelers.

A shallow 4.6 magnitude quake hit near the city of Damavand, about 55 kilometres east of Tehran.

Afghanistan has recorded more than 100 deaths from the virus out of more than 3,700 confirmed cases.

Experts and officials both in Iran and abroad have cast doubts over Covid-19 figures, saying the real number of cases could be much higher than reported.

It was not clear whether live animals or infected vendors or shoppers may have brought the virus into the market, a WHO expert said.

Lombardy region, which has recorded more than 80,000 infections, is the epicentre of Italy's outbreak, one of the worst in Europe in terms of deaths and infections.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the parole would apply to low-risk inmates who have passed their minimum detention period.

The job loss according to the US Labor Department destroyed nearly all the positions created in the prior decade

China has dismissed as groundless U.S. and Australian questioning of how it had handled the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had been open and transparent, despite growing scepticism about the accuracy of its official death toll.

WHO food safety and animal diseases expert Peter Ben Embarek said live animal markets are critical to providing food and livelihoods for millions of people globally and authorities should focus on improving them rather than outlawing them.

The cat, named Negrito, was the sixth feline to be detected with the disease globally. It belonged to a household in the Barcelona area where several family members had caught the virus.

As many as 44 million of the continent's 1.3 billion people could be infected during the same period, the UN health agency estimated, based on its prediction model of 47 African countries.

Iran urged citizens to take social distancing 'more seriously' as it announced more than 1,500 new cases of coronavirus infection.

The tests the lab sends out use the nuclear-derived RT-PCR technology, which is now common for new coronavirus detection and can give results within hours.

Japan's guidelines had previously specified that those who had had a fever of 37.5 Celsius or more for four consecutive days.

Almost across the board, sectors reported precipitous drops in overall employment in April, even though some major players - from online sales to grocery shopping and pharmacies - have seen surges in demand.

Trump, who this week made his first trip out of Washington in more than a month, relies on a federal supply of coronavirus tests so that he can maintain a more traditional schedule, while Biden has been isolating at home for nearly two months.

The number of fatalities in hospitals, care homes and the wider community rose by 626 on the previous day to reach 31,241.

Andre Cuomo said there have been 73 reported cases in NY state of children getting severely ill with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease and toxic shock-like syndrome.

On Thursday, White House officials confirmed that a member of the military serving as one of President Donald Trump's valets tested positive for the coronavirus.

Luke Alexander Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, were among 17 people captured by the Venezuelan military.

Italy's total death toll from COVID-19 since its outbreak came to light on February 21 now stands at 30,201. Only the United States and Britain have seen more deaths from the virus.

The Global Engagement Center earlier said thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic.

More than 145,000 cases of the novel coronavirus have been reported so far, with 10,222 added in the last 24 hours.

In issuing the new regulation on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security cited what it called China's "suppression of independent journalism."

The WHO said reducing the risk of disease transmission from animals to humans in these often overcrowded markets could be addressed in many cases by improving hygiene and food safety standards, including separating live animals from humans.

Scientists are racing to identify effective medicines to use against the new coronavirus, but there is currently no treatment, cure or vaccine.

The 20.5 million jobs lost in April fell disproportionately on African Americans, Latinos, low-wage workers and people with no college education.

Her message was filmed at Windsor Castle, where she and her husband Prince Philip have been staying since the coronavirus outbreak began.

A government tally showed 10,669 new cases over the last 24 hours, fewer than Thursday's record of 11,231 bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 187,859.

The pandemic wave, similarly, will be with us for the foreseeable future before it diminishes. But depending on the location and the policies in place, it will exhibit variegated dimensions and dynamics traveling through time and space.