Iran's official novel coronavirus fatalities crossed the 33,000 mark on Tuesday, the health ministry said, as the country set new records in both daily deaths and infection cases.

Italian officials faced a backlash on Monday after imposing coronavirus restrictions aimed at "saving Christmas", as other hard-hit countries enforced curfews in a bid to avoid fresh national lockdowns.

A campaign by Manchester United striker Marcus Rashford to feed England's poorest children during school holidays has turned into a political football, throwing the spotlight on increased poverty during the coronavirus outbreak.

Chinese officials were racing Sunday to smother a fresh coronavirus outbreak in the country's far northwest after 137 new infections were discovered.

Spain declared a national state of emergency on Sunday to tackle a second coronavirus wave as the World Health Organization reported a third straight day of record new infections across the world.

A record of nearly 80,000 new Covid-19 infections over the course of a day were reported in the United States on Friday, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

Grim data highlighted the struggle for authorities around the world to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control Saturday, as the US reported 80,000 infections in a single day, France extended a curfew to two-thirds of citizens and Germany's death toll passed 10,000.

The "real number" of coronavirus cases in Spain is more than three million, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday in a televised address.

France's second wave of coronavirus could be worse than the first, the boss of Paris public hospital group AP-HP said on Friday as the country registered a record number of daily cases.

Two more senior Palestinian officials have tested positive for the novel coronavirus as veteran chief negotiator Saeb Erekat fights for his life in an Israeli hospital, one of them told AFP.