Your trusted source

The Spanish government has approved tighter lockdown measures announced earlier by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in the latest attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Euronews reports.

All non-essential workers will be confined to their homes from Monday until April 9, a further restriction on top of the constraints already imposed under the state of alarm declared on March 14.

Approval for the move came at an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Sunday, which saw a new record number of COVID-19 deaths observed in the country, with 838 fatalities.

Spain' new tally is a new one-day record and brings the total number of deaths in the country to 6,528. The total number of confirmed cases now stands at 78,797 - an increase of 6,549 in 24 hours.

Italy, which has the world’s highest number of deaths, counted 756 more deaths in 24 hours bringing its total death toll to 10,779. The figure was a significant drop on the two previous days' totals of 969 and 889.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Sunday that "things will get worse before they get better" and that further restrictions may be imposed on citizens.

His warning came just hours after the country announced that its death toll from the deadly virus had passed the grim 1,000 threshold while the number of confirmed cases stood at 17,089.

And in the UK's daily briefing, the deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries said it could be at least six months before life returned to normal in the country.

US President Trump extended social distancing guidelines to April 30, having previously said he wanted the US to return to normal by Easter.

The novel coronavirus has now infected over 143,000 people in the U.S. – more than any other country in the world. COVID-19 had killed over 2,500 people in the U.S. by Sunday night.

In Russia, where the reported numbers had suggested the country was escaping the worst of the virus, the mayor of Moscow ordered a lockdown.

The number of fatalities around the world soared past 33,000 on Sunday, with Europe the hardest hit region.

Across Europe, countries have reinforced measures to contain the spread of the deadly disease with Hungary and Ireland both introducing 15-day lockdown on Friday.

Virus cases in South Africa rose to 709 as the country got ready to go on lockdown on Friday. New Zealand declared an emergency ahead of an unprecedented lockdown which begins on Wednesday. The island nation's recorded its first death on Sunday.

And India announced a 21-day total lockdown in the country of 1.3 billion people - the most sweeping effort yet to stop the transmission of COVID-19.

Thailand's public health ministry said two more people have died from the new coronavirus on Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to nine.

Earlier on Monday, Thailand reported 136 new cases, raising the total number of infections to 1,524.

The number of COVID-19 infections in China continues to slow with health authorities in Beijing reporting 31 new cases at the end of Sunday, Al Jazeera repors.

The figure includes one locally transmitted infection and marks a drop from the 45 cases reported a day earlier. There were no new cases for a sixth consecutive day in central Hubei province, where the coronavirus outbreak was first detected in December last year.