Health News

Moderna Inc on Thursday named David Meline its chief financial officer, as the company develops a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.

The Trump administration has selected five companies, including Moderna Inc, AstraZeneca Plc and Pfizer Inc, as the most likely candidates to produce a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing senior officials.

A field hospital hastily constructed to ease the burden on Stockholm hospitals dealing with a flood of COVID-19 cases will be dismantled in the wake of slowdown in the pandemic, a healthcare official said on Thursday.

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

Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Thursday it plans to begin human trials of its potential COVID-19 vaccine in South Korea later in June, with support from Seoul-headquartered partner, non-profit organization International Vaccine Institute.

The European Union is preparing to use an emergency 2.4-billion- euro ($2.7 billion) fund to make advance purchases of promising vaccines against the new coronavirus, EU officials told Reuters.

Danish researchers have developed a fully automated robot that can take coronavirus swabs so that health care professionals are not exposed to the risk of infection.

Israeli medical device maker Alpha Tau Medical said on Thursday it raised $26 million in a funding round from investors including Shavit Capital, Medison Ventures and OurCrowd to help finance global clinical trials.

Rural parts of India have begun to see a surge in novel coronavirus infections, as millions of migrant workers returning from big cities and industrial hubs bring the virus home with them, according to data collected from seven Indian states.

A planeload of 150 ventilators arrived in Russia from the United States on Thursday, Washington's embassy in Moscow said, to help fight the novel coronavirus in further medical aid collaboration between the two politically-estranged nations.

Quarantined Florida residents worried about their laughter lines and crows' feet need frown no longer - Botox is back, and it's being offered at a drive-through.

Malaysian health authorities on Thursday reported 277 new coronavirus cases after infections were detected in an immigration detention centre.

Drugmaker Roche has received emergency use authorisation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its Elecsys IL-6 test to help identify severe inflammatory response in patients with confirmed COVID-19, it said on Thursday.

Thailand reported 17 new coronavirus cases on Thursday and no new deaths, taking the total number of infections to 3,101, of which 58 were fatalities.

Mexico overtook the United States in daily reported deaths from the novel coronavirus for the first time on Wednesday, with the health ministry registering a record 1,092 fatalities it attributed to improved documenting of the pandemic.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 394 to 182,764, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Thursday.

Brazil registered a record number of daily deaths from the coronavirus for the second consecutive day, according to Health Ministry data released on Wednesday.

Nearly every day, 77-year-old Surin Makradee goes door-to-door in her village in Thailand, visiting every home to check people's temperatures in a routine repeated in communities across the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

China said 300 symptomless carriers of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic, had not been found to be infectious, in a bid to reassure people as countries ease restrictions. But some experts say asymptomatic infections are common, presenting a huge challenge in the control of the disease.

China reported one new coronavirus case and four new asymptomatic COVID-19 cases in the mainland on June 2, the country's health commission said.