Uganda's latest outbreak of the Ebola virus is over, the government and the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Health Minister Ruth Aceng told journalists that no new cases had been registered in the past 42 days.

Wang Jian is anxious to get back to work teaching basketball to children now that China has lifted anti-COVID-19 restrictions. But his gym in the eastern city of Shenyang has been closed for a month because all its coaches are infected.

The most optimistic forecasts say China's business and consumer activity might revive as early as the first quarter of this year. But before that happens, entrepreneurs and families face a painful squeeze from a surge in virus cases that has left employers without enough healthy workers and kept wary customers away from shopping malls, restaurants, hair salons and gyms.

Patients, most of them elderly, are lying on stretchers in hallways and taking oxygen while sitting in wheelchairs as COVID-19 surges in China's capital Beijing.

The Chuiyangliu hospital in the city's east was packed with newly arrived patients on Thursday. By midmorning beds had run out, even as ambulances continued to bring those in need.

European Union nations are fine-tuning a coordinated response to China's COVID-19 crisis on Wednesday and are zeroing in on travel restrictions that would upset both Beijing and the global airline industry.

China has already vehemently rejected travel restrictions that some EU nations have started to impose and has warned of "countermeasures" if such actions should be expanded in coming days.

France, Spain and England will implement tougher COVID-19 measures for passengers arriving from China, authorities said.

France's government is requiring negative tests, and is urging French citizens to avoid nonessential travel to China. France is also reintroducing mask requirements on flights from China to France.

Germany currently sees no need to impose routine tests on arrivals from China, but is seeking a coordinated system to monitor variants across European airports, said health minister Karl Lauterbach on Friday.

The European Union's health agency said Thursday it believed that the introduction of mandatory Covid screenings of travellers from China was "unjustified," despite a surge in cases in China.

The United States has joined a growing number of countries in imposing restrictions on visitors from China after Beijing announced it would remove curbs on overseas travel as Covid cases surge at home.

In response to the Cholera outbreak in Lebanon, the United States Government has made available an additional $1.3 million for UNICEF’s emergency response to contain Cholera and stop transmission in affected areas, UNICEF and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut said in a joint statement.

Since the start of the outbreak, UNICEF has been ramping up prevention efforts with partners on the ground to strengthen the health response through the provision of medicine and hygiene kits; the sanitation systems and hygiene practices at the household and community levels, focusing on areas already experiencing an outbreak and those at high risk.

A batch of a contaminated drug for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases has been identified in Lebanon and Yemen, the World Health Organization has warned.

The WHO said the alert refers to “one batch of substandard (contaminated) METHOTREXTM (methotrexate) 50mg.”