While China has reported 3,070 coronavirus fatalities, death toll from the new virus in Italy has risen to 197.
The number of infected people from the novel coronavirus has crossed 100,000 worldwide as the casualty due to the deadly disease reaches close to 3500.
While 28 new fatalities, taking the death toll in the country to 3,070, the death toll from the new coronavirus in Italy has risen to 197.
Officials in Italy said 49 people had died in 24 hours, while 4,636 cases have been detected in total. Italy has now reported most number of deaths outside China, the epicentre of the new coronavirus.
Iran, however, remains the second country behind China to report most number of cases where 5,823 are confirmed to have been infected. With 21 new deaths on Saturday, the death toll in Iran has reached to 145.
According to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus tracker, the virus has infected 102,180 people globally.
In the US, at least 299 cases of coronavirus have been detected and 14 people have died due to it.
In China, where the virus is believed to have originated in December last year, 99 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection and 28 deaths were reported on Friday. The overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland reached 80,651 by the end of Friday.
China's National Health Commission (NHC) said all 28 deaths were reported in the virus epicentre Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan.
So far, 3,070 people have died of the virus, 22,177 patients are still undergoing treatment and 55,404 others who were discharged after recovery, the NHC said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that additional five countries -- the Philippines, New Zealand, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia -- have seen local transmission of the COVID-19. Bhutan, Cameroon, Serbia and South Africa reported cases of the COVID-19 for the first time in the past 24 hours as of Friday morning, the WHO report said.
Outside China, a total of 97 countries and regions have reported cases of infection, including 34 in India.
Amid claims that COVID-19 will disappear in summer, Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, urged all countries to fight the new virus decisively at the current stage as there is no evidence to suggest such a thing.
Warning against the assumption that the virus would just disappear on its own in the summertime like influenza, Ryan said, "We do not know yet what the activity or behaviour of the virus will be in different climatic conditions."
"We have to assume the virus will continue to have the capacity to spread," he was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.
He called on countries and societies to avoid "blame culture" and to do all the things needed to save lives.
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