Iran on Saturday announced 73 new deaths from the coronavirus, raising the official toll to 5,031 as the government allowed small businesses to reopen in Tehran as they already have in the provinces.

It was the seventh day that the number of deaths in the previous 24 hours had fallen.

The United States on Friday passed 700,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, according to a tally maintained by Johns Hopkins University.

International financial institutions and African leaders warned on Friday the continent needs tens of billions of dollars in additional money to fight the coronavirus pandemic despite debt freezes and massive pledges of support.

A man in his fifties has become the first person to die from the novel coronavirus outbreak in the Kurdish-dominated northern part of war-torn Syria, UN officials said Friday.

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche said Friday it had developed an antibody test that it hopes to roll out in May to detect people previously infected with COVID-19, even those who displayed no symptoms.

Germany said on Friday a month-long lockdown had brought the coronavirus pandemic under control, announcing plans to manufacture 50 million masks a week ahead of the first steps to loosen restrictions.

China's coronavirus ground-zero city of Wuhan on Friday abruptly raised its death toll by 50 percent, saying many fatal cases were "mistakenly reported" or missed entirely in an admission that comes amid growing global doubts about Chinese transparency.

The head of Milan's economically vital Lombardy region began waging a lonely campaign Thursday to get Italy to end its virus lockdown and reopen for business.

French President Emmanuel Macron said there were grey areas in China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak and that things "happened that we don't know about", speaking in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday. 

Spain's coronavirus death toll soared past 19,000 on Thursday with another 551 deaths, but questions over the counting method have raised some regional concerns the real figure is much higher.

After nearly five weeks of confinement, the rise in deaths and infections has slowed over the past fortnight, with the overnight fatalities taking the toll to 19,130.