China begins to loosen restrictions in Hubei as death toll climbs in Italy

As China's Wuhan city reported a marked decline in cases of coronavirus on Friday with just five deaths, the global death toll due to the virus shot up to 4,958 deaths across 120 countries.

According to the latest data, outside China over 53,000 people have been affected with 1,782 deaths. On Friday, 2,493 new cases were reported with 28 new deaths.

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China has reported over 80,000 cases of the virus till date with over 3,000 deaths. The death toll in China stood at 3,176 on Thursday.

Chinese authorities have now begun to loosen restrictions in Hubei province which has been on lockdown for weeks with at least 60 million people on a virtual quartine.

In Europe, Italy has been the worst affected due to COVID-19. The country reported 1,016 deaths with at least 15,113 affected due to the virus.

Several countries have now clampdown on Italy with Slovenia rejecting cargo traffic from Italy. Singapore along with several other countries have banned Italians including people from France, Spain and Germany in order to contain the virus.