BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The world is now in a battle against COVID-19, a disease caused by a previously unknown coronavirus that has spread to over 200 countries and regions.
The following are the updates on the contagious disease.
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WASHINGTON -- A new study has begun recruiting at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to determine how many adults in the United States without a confirmed history of COVID-19 infection have antibodies to the virus, according to a release of the NIH on Friday.
The presence of antibodies in the blood indicates a prior infection. In this "serosurvey," researchers will collect and analyze blood samples from as many as 10,000 volunteers to provide critical data for epidemiological models, said the NIH.
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BEIJING -- The Chinese mainland reported 42 new imported cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Friday, bringing the total number of imported cases to 1,183, the National Health Commission said Saturday.
The mainland also reported eight new suspected cases Friday, all imported, the commission said in its daily report.
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BERLIN -- A new regulation stating that returned travelers have to go into two-week home quarantine entered into force in Germany on Friday with several thousand people at Frankfurt Airport affected on the first day of the regulation, according to a report by the German Press Agency (dpa).
Returned travelers are required to go straight to home quarantine and report to their local health department. But truck drivers, commuters or people who have been abroad for less than 24 hours are exempt from the quarantine order, according to the new regulation.
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LISBON -- The Portuguese government will reactivate national economy with the Eurogroup's around half a trillion euro-financial aid package, a government official pledged on Friday.
In an interview with TSF, one of the main Portuguese radio stations, Portuguese Secretary of State for Finance Ricardo Mourinho Felix said that Portugal will make money available and will not use it as an excuse to curb public spending.
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ANKARA -- Turkish medical representatives and some senior experts from China's Hunan Province on Friday held a video meeting to discuss measures to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak.
Emine Alp Mese, deputy health minister of Turkey, and 15 other medical specialists consulted the Chinese experts on the ways to diagnose, the treatment of patients, the medical observation of the recovered, the management of patients without symptoms and the protection of hospital staff.
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NEW YORK -- The death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 100,000 worldwide on Friday afternoon, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The fresh figure reached 100,376 as of 1:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time (1730 GMT), an interactive map maintained by the CSSE showed.
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GENEVA -- The World Health Organization (WHO) noticed a "welcome slowing" of COVID-19 infections in some of hardest-hit countries in Europe, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday.
"In the past week, we've seen a welcome slowing in some of the hardest-hit countries in Europe, like Spain, Italy, Germany and France," the WHO chief told a regular press briefing.
