A handful of priests celebrated Easter on Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and resurrected.

Church doors will be shut and the Vatican sealed off when Pope Francis leads 1.3 billion Catholics in Easter Sunday celebrations held under a worldwide coronavirus lockdown.

Eggs on the table and a toy rabbit on the dresser -- with a few decorations, Palestinian Christian Sawsan Bitar attempts to salvage some normality from an Easter overshadowed by coronavirus.

"The world will never be the same again," has been the oft-repeated refrain since the coronavirus brought the global economy to a juddering halt.

To some, Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman is guilty of a "catastrophic failure" of leadership for not urgently conveying the coronavirus threat to the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community that elected him.

A small group of Franciscan monks and Roman Catholic faithful took to the streets of Jerusalem's Christian Quarter in the Old City Sunday to distribute olive branches after the traditional Palm Sunday procession was cancelled due to restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Palm Sunday celebrations start the Holy Week leading up to Easter. Worshipers traditionally carry palm fronds and olive branches and march from the top of the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem's Old City.

Fashion brand Armani said on Thursday it would start making single use medical overalls for hospital workers at all its Italian factories. 

Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed by Christians to house Christ's tomb, was shut Wednesday, as Israel tightened movement restrictions and the Palestinians announced their first novel coronavirus death.

Either on television as in Libya or on tablets in the IT-savvy Gulf monarchies, in the time of novel coronavirus millions of schoolchildren around the Arab world are now learning lessons at home.

Governments across the region have shuttered schools forcing pupils to stay away in a bid to combat the virus, but at the risk of deepening an already worrying educational divide.

The Austrian village of Sankt Corona am Wechsel may need to rethink its tourism campaign, its mayor said Monday after the new coronavirus pandemic has drawn some unwanted attention.