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Washington, Apr 17: A record number of 4,591 Americans have died in the last 24 hours due to the deadly novel coronavirus in the US, which has the highest number of COVID-19 casualties in the world.

According to the Johns Hopkins University data, by 8 pm on Thursday, as many as 4,591 Americans have died in the last 24 hours, The Wall Street Journal said.

The previous highest was 2,569 on Wednesday.

By Thursday, more than 662,000 Americans tested positive with the coronavirus.

The dreaded disease, which originated in Wuhan city in China in December last year, has so far claimed more than 144,000 lives and infected over 2.1 million people.

The virus has infected over 671,000 people and claimed more than 33,000 lives, the highest for any country in the world.

New York City and its adjoining areas, including New Jersey and Connecticut have emerged as the epicenter of the virus in the US.

New York alone accounts for 226,000 cases of infections and 16,106 deaths.

In New Jersey, as many as 3,518 people have died of the disease and 75,317 have tested positive.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, till April 14, four per cent of the Americans infected with COVID-19 were of Asian origin and nearly one-third (30 per cent) were African Americans.

US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that experts and scientists report that his strategy to slow the spread of the virus has saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Models predicted between 1.5 million and 2.2 million US deaths. If there was no mitigation, it could have even been higher than that and between 100,000 and 240,000 deaths with mitigation. It is looking like we will come far under even these lowest numbers, he said.

Noting that experts say the curve of the virus has flattened, and the peak in the new cases has passed, Trump said that nationwide, more than 850 counties or nearly 30 per cent of the country have reported no new cases in the last seven days.

Because of our early and aggressive action, we have avoided the tragedy of health care rationing and deadly shortfalls that have befallen in many other nations, nations which wherever possible we are helping, he said.

According to Trump, at least 35 clinical trials are already underway, including antiviral therapies, immune therapies, and blood therapies in the form of convalescent plasma. So far, more than 3.5 million tests have been carried out.

Islamabad, Feb 17: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday warned that Pakistan may face another refugee crisis if the international community failed to take notice of the current situation in India.

Speaking at the two-day refugee summit in Islamabad on 40 years of hosting Afghan refugees in Pakistan, he said India’s "ultranationalist ideology going unchecked could lead to destruction and the region could become a flashpoint", The Express Tribune quoted him as saying.

Khan said if the international community does not take notice of this situation, it will create another refugee crisis for Pakistan as Muslims of India will move to Pakistan.

"This is not the India of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. The United Nations (UN) must play its role otherwise it will become a very big problem in the future," Duniya News quoted Khan as saying.

He said said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that India can destroy Pakistan in 11 days is not a responsible statement by a premier of a nuclear state with a huge population, the paper reported.

Khan made the statement in the presence of visiting UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who was also attending the summit.

He said because of the "Hindutva" ideology, Kashmiris have been lockdown for over 200 days. He alleged under the same ideology, the BJP-led government passed two discriminatory nationalistic legislations, targeting 200 million Muslims in India.

Khan was referring to India's Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the revocation of the special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

The new citizenship law passed by the Indian Parliament in December 2019 offers citizenship to non-Muslim persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The Indian government has maintained that the CAA is an internal matter of the country and stressed that the goal is to protect the oppressed minorities of neighbouring countries.

India revoked Jammu and Kashmir's special status on August 5. Reacting to India's move, Pakistan downgraded diplomatic ties with New Delhi and expelled the Indian High Commissioner.

India has always maintained that Jammu and Kashmir is its integral part and ruled out any third party mediation, including either from the UN or the US, saying it is a bilateral issue with Pakistan.

Mar 6: UK stocks fell again on Friday as growing economic risks from the coronavirus outbreak shattered investor confidence, with Britain recording its first death from the pathogen.

A 1.5% fall for the FTSE 100 erased the blue-chip index's gains from earlier this week. Export-heavy companies have now lost over $230 billion in value since the epidemic sparked a worldwide rout last week.

The domestically focussed mid-cap index was down 1.9%.

Cruise operator Carnival dropped 4.2% to its lowest level since 2012, a day after its Grand Princess ocean liner was barred from returning to its home port of San Francisco on virus fears.

Britain said an older person with underlying health problems had succumbed to the flu-like virus on Thursday, while the number of infections jumped to 115.

In company news, drug maker AstraZeneca fell 1% after it said its treatment for a form of bladder cancer failed to meet the main goal of improving overall survival in patients in a late-stage study.