WHO reports largest single-day increase in Covid-19 cases

The World Health Organisation has reported the largest single-day increase in the number of confirmed coronavirus infections, recording 183,020 new cases in the past 24 hours.

North and South America accounted for almost two-thirds of the new daily infections with more than 116,000 cases, according to the latest daily report from the Geneva-based organisation.

Brazil had the highest number of new cases with 54,771 infections, a record for a new daily total for any country, followed by the United States with 36,617 new cases.

There were a further 4,743 deaths reported in the 24-hour period, bringing the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic to 461,715.

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The most deaths took place in North and South America where there 3,241 coronavirus-related fatalities, or 68 per cent of all deaths reported over the previous 24 hours.

The previous daily record for the most new cases was 181,232 on June 18th.

There have been 8.7 million cases of the disease reported by the WHO.

The United States has the highest number of confirmed cases of any country in the world, at 2.2 million infections of the disease, and the highest number of deaths at 118,895.

It is followed by Brazil with just over one million cases and 48,954 deaths.

The United Kingdom has the highest number of cases in Europe with 303,114 and the highest number of deaths with 42,589.

Germany’s reproduction rate for the disease, the key metric tracking the average number of infections caused by a carrier, climbed to almost three on Sunday.

Public health officials at Germany's Robert Koch Institute said that the country's coronavirus reproductive number climbed to 2.88 on Sunday due to local outbreaks in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia where there is a large cluster of infection among meat plant workers.

This reproductive rate means that for every 100 people who contract the virus, another 288 are likely to become infected with the disease too.

A figure of less than one means that the virus is being contained.

Germany has had 189,822 Covid-19 cases and 8,882 deaths from the virus.