Worldwide Covid-19 toll crosses 274,000

ISLAMABAD: At least 274,625 people have died of the novel coronavirus since the epidemic surfaced in China late last year, according to international media reports.

There have been more than 3,984,488 officially recorded cases spanning 195 countries and territories.

The United States is the worst-hit country, with 77,914 deaths. Britain follows with 31,241, then Italy with 30,201 deaths, Spain with 26,299 and France with 26,230.

Virus-hit Iran allowed worshippers to attend Friday prayers for the first time in more than two months, but the capital remains under restrictions amid the Middle East´s deadliest coronavirus outbreak.

Since reporting its first cases in mid-February, the Islamic republic has struggled to contain the spread of the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease.

The government on Friday urged Iranians to take social distancing "more seriously" as it announced more than 1,500 new cases of coronavirus infection in the Middle East´s hardest-hit country.

In order to contain the spread of the disease, Iran has taken various restrictive measures, without ever imposing a lockdown or quarantine.

Schools have been shut, major events postponed and inter-city travel banned since mid-March as part of those efforts.

But cash-strapped Iran has allowed a gradual reopening of shops since April 11.

It gave the green light for the reopening of mosques on Monday in about 30 percent of the counties where the risk of renewed outbreaks is considered low.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said 55 new virus fatalities in the past 24 hours took the overall death toll in the health crisis to 6,541.

He said another 1,556 people tested positive for the novel coronavirus over the same period of time, taking the country´s caseload to 104,691.

Russia on Friday registered more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases for the sixth day in a row, after emerging as a new hotspot of the pandemic.

A government tally showed 10,669 new cases over the last 24 hours, fewer than Thursday´s record of 11,231 and bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 187,859. The country also recorded 98 new deaths from the virus, for a total of 1,723.

Russia now ranks fourth in Europe in terms of the total number of cases, behind countries where the epidemic hit considerably earlier: Britain, Italy and Spain.

On Thursday Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced an extension of a lockdown in the capital, where most cases are concentrated, to May 31. He also brought in a rule that people will have to wear masks and gloves in public transport and shops or face fines from Tuesday. Residents of the capital are only allowed to leave their homes for brief trips to a shop, to walk dogs or to travel to essential jobs with a permit.

Russia has a national non-working period until May 11 that so far has not been extended.

In India, hundreds of paramilitary forces have been deployed in coronavirus-hotspot Gujarat state as the country on Friday faced a surge in the number of deaths and infections from the outbreak.

Official data show the deadly disease is taking a growing toll in the country of 1.3 billion people even as it begins to emerge from the world´s largest lockdown.

India had 56,000 cases including 1,886 fatalities as of Friday, official figures showed. But experts fear limited testing and incomplete record keeping are masking the true scale of the health crisis.

The number of deaths has doubled to about 100 a day in the past two weeks, while the rate of infections is doubling about every 10 days, official data show. A week ago it was every 12 days.