Rome: Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 174 on Sunday, against 474 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, posting the smallest daily toll of fatalities since March 10.
The daily number of new cases also declined sharply to 1,389 from 1,900 on Saturday. In recent weeks of the epidemic that emerged in Italy on Feb 21, the daily death count has tended to fall on Sundays only to rise again the following day.
Nonetheless the latest data still offers encouragement to the country as it prepares to gradually ease its eight-week-old lockdown -- the longest in Europe -- from Monday.
Saturday's jump in the daily death tally, which bucked a gradual declining trend, appeared to have been due to the addition of hundreds of