The S&P 500 closed 2.42% lower on Friday in the US, where the number of coronavirus cases is now more than 2.5 million according to the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University.

The gold price was up around US$1,772 an ounce on the spot market at the time of writing.

"Gold is caught in a mostly delicate, but erstwhile crazy, dance as the safe haven crowd butts heads with Wall Street bulls in a race to prove what's bigger: the Covid-19 or its recovery," Investing.com commodities analyst Barani Krishnan said on Friday.

TSX-listed gold juniors were on the rise, with hot stock Freegold Ventures (TSX: FVL) telling the regulator on Friday it was not aware of any material undisclosed information that would account for its recent increase in market price and trading volume.

Its shares, which traded below C10c until May drilling results of 188m at 3.69g/t gold at its Golden Summit project in Alaska, hit a fresh one-year high on Friday before closing up 10.7% to $1.24.

Freegold said no results were available yet from the restarted drilling programme at Golden Summit. 

Liberty Gold (TSX: LGD) also hit a 52-week high before closing up 12.5%. It had announced the discovery of a third, high-grade oxide gold zone at its Black Pine project in Idaho last week.

Elsewhere, gold major Newmont closed up 1.28% in New York.

And copper producer Antofagasta closed down 0.52% in London, amid news Codelco will shut its Chuquicamata smelter and refinery in Chile after a third worker died from COVID-19.