Lu Muying died on April 1 in a government quarantine facility in Shanghai, with her family on the phone as doctors tried to resuscitate her. She had tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and was moved there in line with government policy that all coronavirus cases be centrally isolated.

But the 99-year-old, who was just two weeks shy of her 100th birthday, was not counted as a COVID-19 death in Shanghai's official tally. In fact, the city of more than 25 million has only reported 25 coronavirus deaths despite an outbreak that has spanned nearly two months and infected hundreds of thousands of people in the world's third-largest city.

The World Health Organization says that the number of reported new COVID-19 cases worldwide decreased by nearly a quarter last week, continuing a decline since the end of March.

The Geneva-based U.N. health agency said in a weekly report that nearly 5.59 million cases were reported between April 11 and 17, 24% fewer than in the previous week. The number of newly reported deaths dropped 21% to 18,215.

Greece aims to "coexist" with Covid-19, its health minister said Wednesday as the country prepared to further relax restrictions to boost its key tourism industry.

Spain took another step Wednesday toward a sense of normality amid the pandemic by partially ending the near two-year-long obligatory use of masks indoors.

The government decree, passed Tuesday, keeps masks mandatory for visitors and staff in medical centers and nursing homes, although patients won't always be obliged to wear them.

Shanghai allowed 4 million more people out of their homes Wednesday as anti-virus controls that shut down China's biggest city eased, while the International Monetary Fund cut its forecast of Chinese economic growth and warned the global flow of industrial goods might be disrupted.

A total of almost 12 million people in the city of 25 million are allowed to go outdoors following the first round of easing last week, health official Wu Ganyu said at a news conference. Wu said the virus was "under effective control" for the first time in some parts of the city.

Child vaccination rates in Lebanon have dropped by more than 30 percent, compounding a health crisis marked by drug shortages and an exodus of trained professionals, the United Nations said Wednesday.

"The critical drop in vaccination rates has left children vulnerable to potentially deadly diseases such as measles, diphtheria and pneumonia," the UN children's agency UNICEF said in a new report titled "A worsening health crisis for children".

Cases of hepatitis of unknown origin, first detected in UK children, have now been recorded in four more European countries and the U.S., the EU health agency said on Tuesday.

Pfizer and BioNTech on Thursday announced positive results from a clinical trial on the safety and immune response of a third dose of their Covid vaccine in children aged five through 11, adding they would soon seek regulatory authorization.

What do we know about "stealth omicron" so far?

It's an extra-contagious version of the omicron variant, but it doesn't seem to cause more severe disease.

Some residents of Shanghai were allowed out of their homes as the city of 25 million eased a two-week-old shutdown Tuesday after videos posted online showed what was said to be people who ran out of food breaking into a supermarket and shouting appeals for help.

About 6.6 million people will be allowed to leave their homes, but some must stay in their own neighborhoods, according to the online news outlet The Paper. The government said some markets and pharmacies also would reopen.