Reuters

Horlis Ramirez packed shoes with silk bags into boxes in his empty store in London's West End shopping district, voicing fears that coronavirus could deal a fatal blow to his business.

General Electric's healthcare unit said on Thursday it was hiring more people and shifting current employees to ramp up production of ventilators as the global coronavirus pandemic leads to surge in demand for medical equipment.

Turkey has sent 500,000 coronavirus test kits to the United States upon their request, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Thursday.

Governments must urgently consider providing aid to airlines in the Middle East to help them cope with a liquidity crisis due the coronavirus outbreak, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on Thursday.

Airlines across the globe are feeling the pain as travel demand withers because of the coronavirus outbreak, scrapping flights and ditching financial forecasts.

Iran's death toll from coronavirus jumped to 1,284 on Thursday, the health ministry said, with the total number of infections rising to 18,407 in the Islamic Republic, the worst-affected country in the Middle East.

Restrictions imposed by some European Union countries at their borders with other members of the bloc in response to the coronavirus outbreak are disrupting food supplies, representatives of the industry and farmers said on Thursday.

Dubai has received commitments from a group of 10 banks for $9 billion in loans to take full control of port operator DP World and refinance debt of state investment vehicle Dubai World, two sources told Reuters.

Pressures faced by Amazon's staff in France are unacceptable, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday, after unions said workers faced non-payment if they stopped due to fears over the coronavirus outbreak.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on Wednesday declared a 90-day state of catastrophe as cases of the new coronavirus mounted in the nation, giving the government extraordinary powers to restrict freedom of movement and assure food supply and basic services.

Countries across the world must take a comprehensive approach to fighting the pandemic of COVID-19 disease caused by the new coronavirus and isolate, test and trace as many cases as possible, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

World leaders raced to shore up panic-stricken global markets on Thursday, pouring liquidity into the financial system as investors everywhere dumped assets, switching to dollars in cash amid the escalating coronavirus pandemic.

Here's what you need to know about the coronavirus right now:

Oil prices rose on Thursday, bucking panic selling in other markets, as investors tried to assess the impact of massive central bank stimulus in putting a floor under plummeting fuel demand from the coronavirus pandemic.

Emirates is asking pilots and cabin crew to take unpaid leave and rival Qatar Airways laid off about 200 staff in Doha this week as the coronavirus outbreak hammers demand for travel.

Lufthansa said that the airline industry may not survive without state aid if the coronavirus epidemic lasts for a long time, as it throws everything at bringing home stranded travelers and keeping industrial supply chains open.

As worries over the economic hit from the coronavirus outbreak spread from stocks, oil and bonds to cryptocurrencies late last week, bitcoin crashed to its worst day in seven years. But plummeting prices weren't the only problem for investors.

Shares of SoftBank Group Corp closed down 17% on Thursday in their biggest one-day fall, hammered by investor scepticism over the outlook for tech bets, such as office sharing firm WeWork and ridehailer Uber .

Hundreds of Twitter users welcomed on Thursday an offer by Tesla's chief executive, Elon Musk, to make ventilators for coronavirus sufferers, after the United States appealed for donations of respirator masks to combat a shortage.

Oil prices rose on Thursday but pared early gains as investors tried to assess how effective massive stimulus by central banks will be in shoring up the global economy as the shock from the coronavirus pandemic deepens.