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Spain has suffered the second biggest outbreak of coronavirus worldwide. (AP: Manu Fernandez)
The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has surged past 100,000, with confirmed infections reaching 1.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Key points:
- The US is on track to overtake Italy as the hardest-hit country by coronavirus
- Italy has recorded the most deaths at 18,849
- The UK hit a one-day high, with 8,958 patients having died in hospital
The first death came in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on January 9. It took 83 days for the first 50,000 deaths to be recorded and just eight more for the toll to climb to 100,000.
The greatest number of deaths attributed to the pandemic have been recorded in Italy, with 18,849 people dead.
The Italian death toll spiked into the thousands last month, after the country's first known cases — two visitors from Wuhan — were detected in late January.
The number of people in Italian hospitals and intensive care wards has only now started to ease, as the number of new cases decreases.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended a nationwide lockdown and suspension of all non-essential industrial production activities until May 3.
The United States is on track to overtake Italy as the country with the highest number of dead, with a death toll in excess of 18,000 and the most confirmed cases worldwide (496,535).
The New York metropolitan area alone has accounted for more than half the country's death toll.
The first confirmed case in the New York area was recorded in Manhattan on March 1.
Within a week, a state of emergency was declared in the state, and a Navy hospital ship arrived to relieve pressure on the city's overwhelmed hospitals.
But New York officials said the number of people in intensive care had dropped for the first time since mid-March and hospitalisations were slowing.
If the trend holds, the New York Governor says overflow field hospitals that officials have been scrambling to build may not be needed.
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Spain's overall toll has risen to 15,970, while France has recorded 13,197 dead from the pandemic.
Spain has suffered the second largest outbreak of coronavirus behind the US, with 158,273 confirmed cases.
With 605 new deaths recorded overnight — the lowest increase since March 24 — the country continues to see both mortality and contagion rates drop.
Spain said factories and construction sites could resume work on Monday, while schools, most shops and offices will remain closed.
Spanish authorities said they trusted that the plans to allow the return of non-essential workers to factories and construction sites would not cause a significant resurgence in coronavirus infections, as some scientists have warned.
The United Kingdom recorded 980 new deaths on Friday — a one-day high — with 8,958 patients having died in hospital after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Your questions on coronavirus answered:
The UK's death toll has passed the daily peaks recorded in Italy and Spain.
The figures may not be exactly comparable, however, as the UK deaths reported each day occurred over several days or even weeks, and the total only includes deaths in hospitals.
Britons, facing fines for leaving home unless for essential work or seeking food or medicine, have been urged not to travel over the Easter holiday weekend.
Early hotspots China and Iran have reported 3,345 and 4,110 deaths respectively, according to figures released by the World Health Organisation.
Australia has so far recorded 54 deaths, with 6,203 confirmed cases in the country as of Friday.
The true figures on infections and lives lost around the world are believed to be much higher because of limited testing, potential government cover-ups and different counting practices.
What the experts are saying about coronavirus:
With signs of hope emerging, questions have been raised in hard-hit countries about when restrictions might be loosened.
The head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that easing restrictions prematurely could "lead to a deadly resurgence".
The death toll now compares with that of London's Great Plague in the mid-1660s, which killed an estimated 100,000 people, about a third of the city's population at the time.
But it is still far short of the so-called Spanish flu, which began in 1918 and is estimated to have killed more than 20 million people by the time it petered out in 1920.
ABC/AP
What you need to know about coronavirus:
Topics: covid-19, italy, spain, australia, united-states, iran-islamic-republic-of, china, france