Daily COVID-19 updates on March 21

As Italy saw the biggest day-to-day spike in fatalities on Friday and global COVID-19 cases continued to rise, the whole world has been toughening the implementation of anti-virus measures.

The European region reported 17,506 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours as of midnight Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases there to 104,591, according to the daily situation report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on late Friday.

COVID-19 seems to reach a new and tragic milestone every day, as more than 210,000 cases, including over 9,000 deaths, have been reported globally, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday at a press conference.

“Every loss of life is a tragedy,” Tedros said, calling it “motivation” to double down and do everything to stop transmission of the virus and save lives.

In Italy, 627 patients died of COVID-19 in a 24-hour span on Friday, the highest single-day deaths, bringing the country’s COVID-19 death toll to 4,032, according to official data. In the previous 24-hour span, the country saw 427 deaths.

The hard-hit country announced on Friday that it would call up the military to help enforce the national coronavirus lockdown in the hardest-hit parts of the country.

Spain also recorded a steep rise in both death toll and infections on Friday. According to its health ministry, 1,002 people had succumbed to COVID-19 by midday Friday, an increase of 235 deaths from a day ago.