European countries are working to find a balance in how far to ease coronavirus lockdowns, with Germany enforcing mandatory masks in all shops from Wednesday, as the crushing global economic cost of the pandemic becomes clearer.

A New York emergency doctor who treated coronavirus patients has killed herself, with family, police and physicians linking her death to trauma faced by health care workers battling the outbreak.

First signs that transmission of the novel coronavirus has again picked up were visible in German official data, just as the country attempts a cautious easing of its lockdown measures.

The reproduction or infection rate under close watch by health authorities mounted again to around 1.0, meaning each infected person passes the virus on to one other, figures from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for disease control showed late Tuesday.

France and Spain were on Tuesday set to announce plans to lift strict coronavirus lockdowns that have endured for weeks, while on the other side of world surfers returned to Bondi Beach as Australia took its own first steps to ease restrictions.

The White House abruptly canceled Monday's daily media briefing on the coronavirus pandemic after President Donald Trump railed against "enemy" journalists and officials signaled a new public relations strategy.

Almost half of New Yorkers knew someone who died of the new coronavirus, according to a poll Monday which found overwhelming support for confinement measures opposed elsewhere in America. 

The UN rights chief warned Monday that countries flouting the rule of law in the name of fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic risk sparking a "human rights disaster".

Spain on Monday counted another 331 new virus deaths, with the overnight toll rising by several dozen from its lowest level in more than a month.

The United States recorded 1,330 more novel coronavirus deaths in the past 24 hours, according to figures reported late Sunday by the Johns Hopkins University.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte vowed Sunday to reopen schools by September and allow many businesses to resume in a week's time as the country emerges from a near-total shutdown.