A few daring Indians, who remained in Wuhan where the novel coronavirus first emerged and then became a global pandemic, have a word of advice for their compatriots back home: follow the strict lockdown and self-isolation measures to arrest the spread of the deadly disease.

US President Donald Trump has fired a fresh salvo at the World Health Organization, accusing its chief of siding with China and "politicising" the coronavirus pandemic while repeating his threat to freeze the UN agency's funding.

President Donald Trump has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his decision to allow the export of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which could be used in the possible treatment of hundreds and thousands of coronavirus patients in the US.

The United States recorded nearly 2,000 novel coronavirus deaths for a second day in a row, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University as of 8:30 pm Wednesday (0030 GMT Thursday).

 A sizeable chunk of the 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine bought by the US to combat the coronavirus pandemic is from India, President Donald Trump has said as he acknowledged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "great" when he sought his help to allow the sale of the anti-malaria drug to treat the growing number of COVID-19 patients in America.

Tens of thousands of people in Wuhan, the origin point and epicentre for the coronavirus pandemic, began travelling out of the sprawling city on Wednesday as China lifted its 73-day lockdown, even as the number of fresh COVID-19 cases crossed 1,000 in the country and two new deaths heightened concerns of a rebound in infections.

The number of deaths in the US due to the coronavirus on Tuesday crossed 12,700, with a record 1,900 fatalities in a single day, as President Donald Trump sought to assure a grieving nation that new data projections reveal fewer deaths than originally thought.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday declared a month-long state of emergency in Tokyo and six other parts of the country over a spike in coronavirus cases.