Italy's coronavirus death toll rises steeply again but rate of new infections offers hope
24 March 2020 fair use
Italy reported a sharp rise in its coronavirus death toll on Tuesday, with 743 more victims, breaking a two-day trend that had fuelled hopes the epidemic may be slowing in the country. However there was some more positive news.
There had been
601 deaths reported on Monday, and
651 on Sunday.
But Tuesday's daily toll was the second-highest recorded in Italy since the crisis began.
Civil protection agency figures showed that, while the number of new cases was up on Monday's figure, the infection rate was slightly lower.
There were 5,249 new cases reported on Tuesday, meaning there have now been more than 69,000 cases confirmed in the country since the outbreak began just over a month ago.
This figure includes 6,820 deceased patients, and 8,326 who have recovered, meaning there are currently 54,030 active cases.
Almost 900 people had recovered in the past 24 hours, the figures showed.
Despite the rise in deaths, there was some evidence that the coronavirus infection rate may be slowing thanks to national quarantine measures.
As a percentage, the rate of officially-registered new infections was just eight percent - the same as Monday and the lowest level since Italy registered its first death on February 21.
The number of new infections had been as high as 50 percent at the start of March.
Health officials are poring over every new piece of data to see whether two weeks of bans and closures have made a dent in the crisis.
The harshest restrictions are theoretically due to expire on Wednesday evening, although the government is all but certain to extend them in some form for weeks or even months.
"The measures we took two weeks ago are starting to have an effect," civil protection service chief Angelo Borrelli
said earlier on Tuesday.
He said more data over the next few days will help show
"if the growth curve is really flattening."