Latest on the coronavirus: Global cases near 2 million

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide passed 1.98 million on April 15 as the pandemic swept across the globe.

Johns Hopkins University's website showed over 126,000 people have died from the virus.

The total number of people recovered from COVID-19 reached passed 493,000 according to the data.

Americas

• U.S. deaths from the coronavirus topped 28,300, according to a Reuters tally, as officials debated how to reopen the economy without reigniting the outbreak.
• U.S. President Donald Trump halted funding to the World Health Organization over its handling of the pandemic, drawing condemnation from infectious disease experts.
• New York City revised its official COVID-19 death toll sharply higher to more than 10,000, to include victims presumed to have perished from the lung disease but never tested.
• Canada's economic shutdown will last for weeks more to ensure that measures to fight the coronavirus are working, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, while the country's death toll crossed 900.
• Apple Inc said it would release data that could help inform public health authorities on whether people are driving less during lockdown orders to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
• Nurses at a public hospital hit by Mexico's worst coronavirus outbreak were told by their managers not to wear protective masks at the start of the epidemic to avoid sowing panic among patients, nurses and other medical workers said.
• There have been 126 confirmed cases of the coronavirus among oil and gas workers in Brazil, including 74 people who were recently on offshore oil platforms.

Europe

• Britain's economy could shrink by 13% this year due to...