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Italian officials said Sunday they may soon have to consider easing restrictions after seeing the daily coronavirus death toll plunge to its lowest in over two weeks, AFP reported. 

The 525 official COVID-19 fatalities reported by the civil protection service was the Mediterranean country's lowest toll since 427 deaths were registered on March 19.

They also represented a decline of 23 percent from the 681 deaths reported on Saturday.

"The curve has started its descent and the number of deaths has started to drop," Italy's ISS national health institute director Silvio Brusaferro told reporters.

"If these data are confirmed (in the coming days), we will have to start thinking about Phase 2," he said in reference to an easing of a month-long national lockdown.

Italy's second phase of the battle against a virus that has now officially killed 15,887 may be trickier for the government to pull off than the first.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte decided to address Italy's biggest crisis in many generations by sacrificing the economy for the benefit of the health care system.

The nation of 60 million became first the Western democracy to voluntarily shut down almost all businesses and ban public gatherings -- including simple walks in the park -- on March 12.

His gamble appears to be paying off.

Officials reported the first decline Sunday in the number of non-critical COVID-19 patients receiving hospital care across the country's 22 regions.

That number fell from 29,010 on Saturday to 28,949 on Sunday.

The number of critical patients edged down from 3,994 on Saturday to 3,977 on Sunday -- the second successive decline.