Italy has set a new record for daily infections with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, with 54,762 cases in the past 24 hours, in addition to 144 coronavirus-related deaths, according to data from the Italian Ministry of Health on Saturday.
According to official figures, nearly 55,000 new cases – 50,599 were counted on Friday – bring the total number of infections in Italy since the beginning of the epidemic in February 2020 to 5622431, and deaths have risen to 136,530.
There are currently 500,466 active chaos cases and the positivity index is 5.6%, up two percentage points from the day before (5.4%).
Compared to the previous year, vaccinations are making a difference, considering that the vaccination campaign started on December 27, 2020.
On December 25, 2020, 19,037 new cases of infection and 459 deaths were recorded.
Additionally, a year ago, the total number of hospitalized patients was 23,402, and currently less than 9,000.
In intensive care units there were 2,584 patients hospitalized a year ago, while today there are 1,071 patients.
Covid-19 has killed more than 5.38 million people worldwide since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest report from AFP.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which was discovered in late 2019 in Wuhan, central China, and currently with variants identified in several countries.
A new variant, Omicron, classified as a concern by the World Health Organization (WHO), has been detected in South Africa, but since South African health authorities raised the alert on November 24, infections have been reported in at least 89 countries of the world. All continents, including Portugal.
JSD // HB
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