Healthcare workers in Britain and Thailand have started taking part in a trial to determine whether two anti-malarial drugs can prevent COVID-19, including one that U.S. President Donald Trump says he has been taking.
DEATHS AND INFECTIONS
* More than 5.14 million people were reported to have been infected globally and 332,845 have died, according to a Reuters tally as of 1217 GMT on Friday.
EUROPE
* Oxford University and AstraZeneca plan to recruit around 10,000 adults and children in Britain for trials of an experimental coronavirus vaccine.
* Britain has extended its mortgage payment holiday scheme for homeowners in financial difficulty for another three months.
* George Soros, the billionaire financier, cautioned that the European Union's survival was threatened by the novel coronavirus unless it can issue perpetual bonds to help weak members such as Italy.
* German authorities said they closed another abattoir after an outbreak of coronavirus among its workers.
AMERICAS
* The United States has secured almost a third of the first 1 billion doses planned for AstraZeneca's experimental COVID-19 vaccine by pledging up to $1.2 billion.
* Brazil suffered a record of 1,188 daily coronavirus deaths on Thursday and is fast approaching Russia to become the world's No. 2 COVID-19 hot spot behind the United States.
* A quarter of Americans have little or no interest in taking a coronavirus vaccine, a poll found, with some voicing concern that the record pace at which vaccine candidates are being developed could compromise safety.
ASIA-PACIFIC
* The Japanese government is considering setting up a 12 trillion yen ($ billion) safety net to help firms hit by the coronavirus pandemic, the Nikkei newspaper reported.
* Japanese Finance Minister and Bank of Japan Governor met in Tokyo, the finance ministry said, in a show of resolve to coordinate fiscal and monetary policies.
* Japan's central bank created its own version of the U.S. Federal Reserve's "Main Street" lending programme to channel more money to small businesses.
* Australia will save around A$60 billion ($39 billion) on a coronavirus wage subsidy scheme after progress in controlling the outbreak and detected reporting halved the number of people expected to be covered by the scheme.
* China will draft and implement in 2020 a response plan for ensuring food security, the country's state planner said.
* Thailand will maintain its state of emergency over the coronavirus until the end of June, its COVID-19 task force said, even as the country reported no new coronavirus infections or deaths on Friday.
* Coronavirus cases in Singapore topped 30,000 as the city-state reports hundreds of new infections in cramped migrant worker dormitories every day.
* Malaysian Prime Minister will be home quarantined for 14 days after an officer who attended a meeting with him this week tested positive for the new coronavirus, the prime minister's office said.
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* South Africa could see up to 50,000 coronavirus deaths and as many as 3 million infections by the end of the year, scientific models showed on Thursday.
* Lebanon's Health Ministry reported 63 new cases, the largest single-day increase since the outbreak of the pandemic.
ECONOMIC FALLOUT
* World stocks took a hit and the Chinese yuan weakened as Beijing moved to impose a new security law on Hong Kong after last year's pro-democracy unrest, further straining fast-deteriorating U.S.-China ties.
* The global coronavirus pandemic has led to a sharp deterioration in fiscal prospects for almost all sovereigns in the Middle East and Africa (MEA), Fitch Ratings says.
* Tax revenues of the German government and the 16 federal states fell by 25.3% in April from a year earlier, the finance ministry's monthly report showed.
* Germany imported 23.3% less natural gas in March than a year earlier as the coronavirus pandemic eroded demand, official data showed.
