Coronavirus-related deaths in the US exceed 40,000 with nearly half of all casualties in New York state, as protests against “stay at home” orders flared in a number of states.
Italy reports lowest number of deaths in a week, while the pace of new infections also slowed. Spain registered its lowest daily death toll in almost a month.
New Zealand will relax some of its restrictions – among the most stringent in the world – from next Monday.
Globally, more than 2.4 million people have been diagnosed with the virus while over 167,000 have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. More than 639,000 people have recovered.
China has said Australia’s calls for an investigation into the origins and spread of the virus are baseless.
Here are the latest updates:
Monday, April 20
17:50 GMT – Turkey’s coronavirus death toll rises by 123 to 2,140
Turkey’s confirmed cases of the COVID-19 disease increased by 4,674 in the past 24 hours, and 123 more people have died, taking the death toll to 2,140, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
The total number of cases in the country stood at 90,980, he said, the highest total for any country outside Europe or the United States.
A total of 13,430 people have recovered from the new coronavirus so far, and the number of tests carried out over the past 24 hours stood at 39,703, the minister said.
17:40 GMT – France becomes fourth country to pass 20,000 death toll
France officially registered more than 20,000 deaths from coronavirus infections, becoming the fourth country to go beyond that threshold after Italy, Spain and the United States, and the pace of increase of fatalities sped up again after several days of slowing.
But the number of people in intensive care fell for the 12th consecutive day, suggesting the national lockdown put in place more than a month ago is having positive effects in containing the disease.
France’s public health chief Jerome Salomon told a news briefing the coronavirus-linked fatalities were up 2.8 percent, at 20,265, versus an increase of 2 percent Sunday.
17:25 GMT – Man deported from US infects 14 migrants in Mexico
At least 15 migrants from several countries tested positive for coronavirus at a shelter in northern Mexico, Tamaulipas state authorities said, adding a man carrying the virus and deported from Houston, Texas had infected most of the others.
A Mexican man deported at the McAllen-Reynosa border has also tested positive, the Tamaulipas state health department said in a statement.
AL JAZEERA
