Metro and rail services in Paris and its suburbs will be cut to a minimum as part of the nationwide coronavirus lockdown, officials said Wednesday.

The number of confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in the United States reached 60,115 on Wednesday while 827 people had died, a tracker run by Johns Hopkins University showed.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed at least 20,599 people worldwide since it first appeared in China in December, according to an AFP tally at 1900 GMT Wednesday using official figures.

Social distancing appears to be slowing the spread of the coronavirus in New York, the epicenter of America's pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.

Italy's coronavirus infections rate slowed for a fourth successive day Wednesday as fresh evidence emerged that long and painful lockdowns against pandemics will work.

Canadian researchers launched a study Monday into the use of a powerful anti-inflammatory drug to reduce the risks of pulmonary complications and death related to the new coronavirus.

Spain has signed a multimillion-euro contract with China to acquire medical supplies to fight the coronavirus epidemic, Health Minister Salvador Illa said Wednesday.

The obituaries posted on a board where the newspapers might otherwise hang tell the story of an Italian village living through a disaster the mayor calls "worse than the war."

The UN's health agency has faced criticism in the past for overreacting and for moving too slowly in fighting epidemics, but it has rarely faced as much scrutiny as with the coronavirus pandemic.

Iran's president warned that his government was poised to introduce tough new measures against the coronavirus Wednesday as the death toll from one of the world's deadliest outbreaks topped 2,000.