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Brazil's coronavirus death toll rose to seven on Thursday, including the first fatalities in tourist hotspot Rio de Janeiro, as Latin America's largest nation closed more borders to visitors and the foreign minister waded into a diplomatic spat with China.

Demand for U.S. meat at grocery stores will likely exceed supplies for at least another week, the chief executive of Tyson Foods Inc told Reuters on Thursday, as the coronavirus pandemic fuels panic buying among shoppers.

U.S. stocks managed to post gains on Thursday after recent steep losses as policymakers around the world took further emergency actions to try to help financial markets cope with deep coronavirus-driven economic damage.

European and American stocks rebounded on Thursday, halting further declines, in a sign further steps to boost liquidity by the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks has tentatively calmed markets that still fear a coronavirus-induced slowdown.

From Brazil to Norway, policymakers are leaping to defend currencies against the onslaught of the dollar which scaled three-year peaks on Thursday, raising speculation that a joint move by the world's biggest central banks may be in the offing.

LATAM Airlines Group , South America's largest carrier, will cut pay to its 43,000-strong workforce by 50% for three months due to economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, a source close to the situation told Reuters on Thursday.

Microsoft Corp's Teams chat and conferencing app gained more than 12 million daily users in one week, a 37.5% jump as more people worked from home during the coronavirus outbreak, the company said on Thursday.

Tesla Inc has told employees it reduced the number of workers at its California vehicle factory to curb the spread of coronavirus as Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company may start producing ventilators to ease a U.S. shortage.

The Bank of England promised 200 billion pounds of bond purchases and cut its key interest rate to 0.1% in a second emergency move in just over a week to try to mitigate the hit to Britain's economy from the coronavirus outbreak.

Siemens managing board member Michael Sen will no longer take charge of the new energy business which the German engineering group wants to spin off later this year, it said on Thursday, after he agreed to leave the company.

The crisis for airlines deepened on Thursday as Lufthansa , which has grounded most of its fleet, warned the industry may not survive coronavirus pandemic without government aid to offset nosediving demand.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would get involved in the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia at the appropriate time, saying low gasoline prices were good for U.S. consumers even as they were hurting the industry.

Brazil's tourist hotspot Rio de Janeiro reported its first two coronavirus deaths on Thursday, bringing the country's toll to six, as Latin America's largest nation closed more borders to visitors and the foreign minister waded into a diplomatic spat with China.

Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it has halted its Prime Pantry delivery service in the United States to restock groceries, following a surge in online orders by shoppers worried about the coronavirus pandemic.

A wave of layoffs at restaurants, bars and hotels, as efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic bring much of everyday American life to a halt, could drive new applications for U.S. unemployment benefits to a record 1.5 million or more next week, economists warned on Thursday.

Prince Albert of Monaco has tested positive for coronavirus but his health is not a cause for concern, his office said on Thursday.

Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday it will extend a planned two-day shutdown of all North American plants through April 3 as the spread of coronavirus continues.

The southern Swiss canton of Ticino on the border with Italy is being swamped with coronavirus patients and authorities are battling to find enough intensive care beds, a top public health official said on Thursday.

The minister leading the Dutch government's fight against the coronavirus resigned on Thursday, a day after collapsing from exhaustion during a parliamentary debate on the epidemic.

The U.S. Department of Energy said on Thursday it will buy up to 30 million barrels of crude oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by the end of June as a first step in fulfilling President Donald Trump's directive to fill the emergency stockpile to help domestic crude producers.