British drugmaker GSK said on Thursday that its previous flu pandemic vaccine, which used some of the same ingredients as COVID-19 vaccines currently under development, was not linked to a rise in cases of the sleep disorder narcolepsy.
The European Commission launched a new global fundraising campaign on Thursday to finance the development and worldwide distribution of testing, vaccines and treatments against COVID-19, seeking to address concerns they may not be equally shared.
The chief executive of AstraZeneca , which is developing a leading coronavirus vaccine with Oxford University, said it is too early to deliberately expose trial participants to the pathogen, but it may become an option if ongoing tests hit a snag.
France will allow restaurants, bars and cafes to reopen from June 2, though with more restrictions in Paris than elsewhere, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Thursday as he announced the next phase in easing the country's coronavirus lockdown.
Spain said its coronavirus death toll reached 27,119 on Thursday, rising by just one for the second day in a row as authorities fine-tune a new way of logging cases and deaths.
Quest Diagnostics said on Thursday it received emergency use authorization (EUA) for its self-collection COVID-19 test kit from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, sending its shares up 3%.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in France jumped by 3,325 to 149,071, though the increase was not due to a rise in daily infections but was a result of the inclusion of data from a new tracking system, the health ministry said in a statement.
Egypt registered 1,127 new coronavirus cases and 29 deaths, the health ministry said on Thursday, the highest daily increase.
Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 70 on Thursday, against 117 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases edged up to 593 from 584 on Wednesday.
Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd will be allowed to keep a drug used to treat bowel disease because changes in the market have removed the need to sell it to allay EU antitrust concerns over last year's acquisition of Shire plc.