The World Health Organization said Friday it was studying a possible link between COVID-19 and a rare inflammatory illness that has sickened and killed children in Europe and the United States.

Brazilian Health Minister Nelson Teich resigned Friday after less than a month on the job over what an official said was "incompatibility" with President Jair Bolsonaro's approach to fighting the country's spiraling coronavirus crisis.

Retail shops and supermarkets reopened Friday in Tunisia after the government announced zero coronavirus cases for the fifth consecutive day.

Treating COVID-19 patients with the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) had no positive effect and caused other health complications, two new studies showed Friday.

The novel coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 people worldwide, mostly in Europe and the United States, since it emerged in China late last year, according to an AFP tally of official figures on Thursday at 2030 GMT.

The United States recorded 1,754 coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 85,813, according to the latest real-time tally Thursday reported by Johns Hopkins University.

US health authorities issued an alert Thursday over a rare but sometimes deadly autoimmune condition among children that is believed to be linked to COVID-19.

The new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a WHO modelling study that says nearly a quarter of a billion people will be infected.

Japan's prime minister on Thursday lifted for most of the country a state of emergency imposed to tackle the coronavirus, but kept it in place for Tokyo and Osaka.

Beijing accused the United States Thursday of smearing China after Washington alleged Chinese hackers were attempting to steal research on developing a vaccine against the coronavirus.