The World Health Organization on Friday urged countries, companies and researchers to pull down the barriers and open up their findings on COVID-19 as it unveiled a global knowledge-sharing platform.

More than 12,500 deaths of care home residents in Britain were linked to the coronavirus, according to figures released Friday, heaping further pressure on the government over its handling of the pandemic.

Dutch authorities on Friday reported the country's first coronavirus case in a dog and infections in three cats, but said chances of contamination through pets were minimal.

U.S. President Donald Trump Friday said he hoped a COVID-19 vaccine would be available by the end of the year, and announced he was appointing a former pharmaceutical executive to spearhead the effort.

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.