Health News

A single mother in Thailand is doing brisk business out of face shields with characters from cartoons, games and sci-fi movies, hoping to cash in and promote safety for children as her country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.

About half a dozen states including Texas and Arizona are grappling with a rising number of coronavirus patients filling hospital beds, fanning concerns that the reopening of the U.S. economy may spark a second wave of infections.

Thailand will lift a nationwide curfew and ease more restrictions next week, a spokesman for its coronavirus task force said on Friday, after the country has reported no local transmissions of the virus for 18 days.

An experimental drug developed by an Australian researcher could help prevent deaths from COVID-19 by controlling the formation of blood clots responsible for breathing difficulties, organ failure, stroke and heart attack.

South Korea will extend prevention and sanitation guidelines against the coronavirus until daily new infections drop to single digits, the health minister said on Friday, failing which he warned of a return to tough social distancing measures.

Australia has eliminated the novel coronavirus in many parts of the country, its chief medical officer said on Friday, clearing the way for sports fans to soon return to stadiums and for foreign students to prepare to fly back to classes.

Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

India on Friday reported a total of 297,535 coronavirus infections, surpassing the United Kingdom to become the fourth worst affected country in the world.

Japanese drug-discovery company PeptiDream Inc said on Friday it would collaborate with Merck & Co in developing COVID-19 therapies.

Australia has effectively eliminated COVID-19 in some parts of the country, its chief medical officer said on Friday.

Five years ago, in an office complex with a giant sculpture of a mosquito just northwest of Phnom Penh, Jessica Manning struck on a novel idea. Rather than spend more years in what felt like a futile search for a malaria vaccine, she would take on all mosquito-borne pathogens at once.

China is building hundreds of testing laboratories and stocking up on tests to ramp up screening for the coronavirus, even in healthy people, having all-but stamped out local transmission of the disease.

Facing budget shortfalls and double-digit unemployment, governors of U.S. states that are COVID-19 hotspots on Thursday pressed ahead with economic reopenings that have raised fears of a second wave of infections.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 258 to 185,674, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday.

Airspace Systems, a California startup company that makes drones that can hunt down and capture other drones, on Thursday released new software for monitoring social distancing and face-mask wearing from the air.

Most weekdays since the coronavirus broke out in Bolivia, Harvard-educated Luis Fernando Ortiz leaves his job managing the country's biggest freight forwarding agent and dons a hazmat suit to go in search of a body.

Brazilians critical of their government's ambiguous response to a surging coronavirus pandemic dug 100 graves and stuck black crosses in the sand of Rio's Copacabana beach on Thursday in a tribute to the nearly 40,000 people who have died so far.

Brazil reported a cumulative total of 802,828 confirmed cases of coronavirus on Thursday, with 30,412 new infections in the last 24 hours in the world's second worst outbreak after the United States.

Twenty-six drug manufacturers were sued on Wednesday by the attorneys general of most U.S. states and several territories, which accused them of conspiring to reduce competition and drive up generic drug prices.

German victims of defective breast implants made by French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) cannot claim damages from its insurer as its policy covered only French victims, Europe's top court said on Thursday, dealing a blow to thousands of women worldwide.