Italian officials reported more than 3,400 deaths from the virus as of Thursday
Citing Italian officials, international media reports said yesterday the death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy rose in the last 24 hours by 427 to 3,405, overtaking the total number of deaths so far registered in China.
Meanwhile, China reported no new locally transmitted coronavirus cases on Wednesday. At a news conference on Thursday morning, officials from China's National Health Commission announced there had been just 34 new cases in the past 24 hours — all imported from overseas — and eight new deaths, all in Hubei, the province where the virus was first identified. There were there no new reported cases in Hubei at all on Wednesday.
The Italian Civil Protection Agency announced 3,405 total deaths on Thursday. China, which has seen a dramatic slowing of cases, reports 3,242 deaths.
Italian officials reported more than 41,000 cases on Thursday, a jump of more than 5,000 new cases.
Meanwhile, Iranian media outlets reported on March 19 that according to the latest figures provided by the Health Ministry, Iran's death toll from the coronavirus has reached 1,1284, with 149 new deaths. A total of 5,979 patients have fully recovered.
Iran has been accused of acting too slowly and of even covering up initial cases. But President Hassan Rouhani on March 18 rejected criticism of his government's response to the coronavirus outbreak,
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech to his Cabinet Wednesday that the government was "straightforward" in its messaging and reacted sufficiently to address the crisis.
“We spoke to people in a honest way. We had no delay,” he said on a state-run news station, according Iran Daily.
Rouhani called on the Health Ministry to write special hygiene protocols for those businesses that are needed to remain active amid the coronavirus spread in the country in an effort to contain the contagion.
According to Press TV, Iran’s ambassador to Spain says Iran is the only country in the world that cannot buy medicine and medical equipment from the global market because of America’s “cruel and inhumane” sanctions, which are hindering the country’s fight against a coronavirus outbreak.
Ambassador Hassan Qashqavi reportedly made the remarks in an interview with Spain's La Razon newspaper on Wednesday.
Iran has been the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, with a total of 16,169 confirmed cases, roughly 90 percent of the region's cases.
Nearly 220,000 people have now been confirmed with the coronavirus globally, of which at least 84,000 have recovered from COVID-19, while more than 8,800 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in the US.
