The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide passed 40 million on Monday, according to an AFP tally at 0715 GMT based on official sources.

Belgium imposed a nationwide overnight curfew on Monday as Switzerland made wearing face masks compulsory in indoor public spaces, the latest desperate measures by European governments to fight a powerful second coronavirus wave.

Here are the latest developments in the coronavirus crisis:

The coronavirus remains active on human skin for nine hours, Japanese researchers have found, in a discovery they said showed the need for frequent hand washing to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

Israel started cautiously emerging from a second coronavirus lockdown Sunday after a month of tight restrictions, re-opening preschools, kindergartens, beaches and national parks, with numbers of new infections falling.

The number of people in South Africa who have tested positive for coronavirus has topped 700,000, official figures showed overnight, another grim milestone for the continent's worst-hit country.

Millions of French people enjoyed a last night of freedom on Friday before a Covid-19 curfew in Paris and other large cities came into force at midnight, for a least a month, prompted by an alarming surge in new cases.

The antiviral drug remdesivir, considered one of the most promising Covid-19 treatments, turns out to do little to prevent deaths from the disease, according to a WHO-backed study.

Remdesivir, which was part of the experimental cocktail given to US President Donald Trump when he caught the new coronavirus last month, was one of several reviewed in a large study of more than 11,000 people across 30 countries.

A $60 double-dose experimental coronavirus vaccine is being made available to some residents in an eastern Chinese city, health officials have said, the first details of a mass rollout for an as-yet unproven vaccine.

More than half of countries in the EU, plus the UK, were on Thursday labelled red in a new map issued by the bloc's disease control agency aimed at guiding decisions on travel restrictions.