BEIJING, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

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NEW YORK -- New York City officials said Friday that schools will not reopen for in-person instruction unless the city's coronavirus infection rate remains below 3 percent on a seven-day rolling average.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city would be watching the positivity rate for COVID-19 in NYC to determine if schools can reopen and stay open for the 2020-2021 school year. "We will not reopen our schools unless the city's infection rate is below 3%."

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CAIRO -- Egypt registered on Friday 321 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total cases registered in the country to 94,078, said the Egyptian Health Ministry.

It is the sixth day in a row for the daily new infections to fall below 500 in the country.

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BRUSSELS -- The European Union (EU) has made available up to 40 million euros (47.1 million U.S. dollars) to purchase specialized equipment to increase the collection of plasma from COVID-19 survivors for the treatment of people who contract the disease, the European Commission said Friday in a statement.

The EU urged over 200 blood collection services around the bloc to apply for funding for the purchase of plasmapheresis equipment, which extracts plasma from donors. It said the aim is to support the treatment of new COVID-19 patients who are fighting the disease, by increasing EU capacity to collect convalescent plasma from recovered patients.

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BEIJING -- Chinese health authority said Saturday that it received reports of 45 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Friday, 39 of which were domestically transmitted.

Of the domestically transmitted cases, 31 were reported in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and eight were in Liaoning Province, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.

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WELLINGTON -- New Zealand reported two new cases of COVID-19 in managed isolation facilities on Saturday, said the Ministry of Health in a statement.

The new cases were females in their 20s and arrived from Pakistan via Dubai on July 27. They were in managed isolation facilities upon arrival and had been transferred to the quarantine facility in Auckland, said the ministry statement.

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WASHINGTON -- Republican and Democratic lawmakers haven't reached an agreement on a new relief package as the extra 600-dollar unemployment benefits for roughly 30 million people expire on Friday.

The two parties seem far apart from a deal, with unemployment benefits extension being one of the sticking points, and both sides of the aisle have blamed each other for failing to make progress. Enditem

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