Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Sunday that the novel coronavirus could cost as many as a million jobs in the country as many industries considered not essential remain shut.
China is open to international cooperation to identify the source of the novel coronavirus but any investigation must be free of political interference, China's foreign minister said on Sunday. Wang Yi blasted what he called efforts by US politicians to fabricate rumors about the pathogen's origins and stigmatize China.
British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak has authorized a bailout plan to rescue companies that are seen as strategically important, with the state expected to buy stakes in crucial businesses that are facing acute financial problems, the Financial Times newspaper reported.
On Apr 22, Brazil was fast becoming a new coronavirus flashpoint, but President Jair Bolsonaro and his cabinet barely mentioned the pandemic in a videotaped meeting that has triggered outrage and fuelled a potentially explosive investigation.
Argentina extended until June 7 a mandatory lockdown in metropolitan Buenos Aires on Saturday and tightened some movement restrictions, after a steady increase in the city's confirmed coronavirus cases in recent days.
The White House on Sunday (May 24) said it was prohibiting most non-US citizens from traveling to the United States if they had been in Brazil in the last two weeks, two days after the South American nation became the world No. 2 hot spot for coronavirus cases.
The first of five Iranian tankers carrying fuel for gasoline-starved Venezuela entered the country's exclusive economic zone on Saturday, despite a US official's warning that Washington was considering a response to the shipment. The tanker, named Fortune, reached the country’s waters at around 7:40 pm local time (1140 GMT) after passing north of the neighboring dual-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, according to vessel-tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon.
French oil trader Pierre Andurand was catapulted into the spotlight this year after correctly betting that the deadly novel coronavirus would spark a sub-zero oil market collapse. Andurand, the 43-year-old founder of London-based Andurand Capital who runs two multi-million-dollar funds, bet in February that the deadly COVID-19 outbreak could represent a rare black swan event that would send prices into reverse.
Chile's healthcare system is under strain and very close to the limit, President Sebastian Piñera admitted on Sunday, as the number of confirmed novel coronavirus infections approaches 70,000 after a rapid increase in recent days.
The Chinese virology institute in the city where COVID-19 first emerged has three live strains of bat coronavirus on-site, but none match the new contagion wreaking chaos across the world, its director has said.