U.S. disease expert Anthony Fauci told Congress Tuesday that Donald Trump never told him or other officials to curb coronavirus testing, essentially contradicting the president who told supporters he had urged such slowdown.

"None of us have ever been told to slow down on testing," Fauci told a House panel on U.S. efforts to mitigate the pandemic, adding that "in fact we will be doing more testing" instead of less.

Confidence in the Swedish authorities' ability to manage the coronavirus pandemic has fallen, a poll published on Tuesday showed, as the death toll has soared amid a highly-publicised light approach.

The entire district of Guetersloh in western Germany will be placed in lockdown after a coronavirus outbreak at a slaughterhouse, North Rhine-Westphalia state premier Armin Laschet said Tuesday. 

Coronavirus cases in the West Bank have more than doubled in a week, the Palestinian Authority said Monday after warning a second wave of infections could be worse than the first.

The World Health Organization called Monday for a rapid increase in production of the steroid dexamethasone, after British clinical trials found it has life-saving potential for critically-ill coronavirus patients.

More than nine million people have now been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, according to an AFP tally drawing on official sources, as of Monday 1520 GMT.

Brazil says it has registered more than 50,000 deaths from the coronavirus outbreak as well as about one million infections, as the second worst-affected country in the world struggles to control the disease.

China banned imports from a top U.S. poultry producer and ordered a Beijing Pepsi factory to close Sunday as authorities clamped down on food production and distribution amid a new coronavirus cluster in the capital.

The Palestinian Authority has said it is temporarily closing the cities of Hebron and Nablus in the occupied West Bank to contain the spread of coronavirus after a sharp rise in infections.

Spain reopened its borders with France on Sunday, getting rid of one of the most potent symbols of Europe's battle against the coronavirus, as infections in Latin America surged past two million.