Italy, Spain see drop in deaths

Italy and Spain reported their lowest daily rise in Covid-19 deaths and said the number of patients in intensive care had fallen for the first time.

Italian officials urged the country not to flout strict lockdown measures they said were starting to show results, although new cases rose by 4,805 on Saturday which was slightly higher than recent daily increases.

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The country's Civil Protection department reported 681 deaths on Saturday, bringing the total to 15,632 since the outbreak of the new coronavirus epidemic in northern Italy on February 21. It was the lowest daily rise in deaths since March 23.

"This is an important piece of news because it allows our hospitals to breathe," Civil Protection head Angelo Borelli told a regular daily briefing where he has announced the grim daily tally of the world's most deadly outbreak of the disease.

For days, Italian officials have said that broadly stable rises in the number of cases suggested that the outbreak had reached a plateau and that the numbers would begin to go down - if strict lockdown measures were respected.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte decided to impose an economically crippling lockdown in a bid to save the health care system from collapse.

He called in thousands of retired doctors and spent hundreds of millions of euros to shore up Italy's emergency wards.

Spain saw its third consecutive daily decline in the number of people dying from the coronavirus pandemic as the country recorded another 674 fatalities yesterday.

The health ministry said total deaths were now 12,418, the highest in the world after Italy, since the pandemic emerged in China in December.

The 674 fatalities, which were sharply down on the record 950 recorded on April 2, represented an increase of 5.7 percent over the last 24 hours, compared to a 30 percent leap in one recent day.

The World Health Organization's director for Europe, Hans Kluge, tweeted about Spain: "Careful optimism as result of bold measures, innovative approaches & courageous decisions".

The number of infections in the country rose 4.8 percent to 130,759, indicating a slowdown in the spread from 8.2 percent on April 1 and 14 percent 10 days ago.

The number of people declared to have recovered has increased by 11 percent, rising above 38,080.

The authorities say they believe they have stabilised the spread of the virus but have decided to extend until midnight April 25 a strict lockdown imposed on Spain's 46.6 million people since March 14.