The virus death toll soared to more than 13,300 worldwide as worst-hit Italy reported a one-day record number of deaths – nearly 800, with the country’s overall toll shooting past 4,800 with more than 53,000 cases.

On Sunday, mainland China reported 46 new cases, 45 of which were imported. The country confirmed six more deaths, five of which were from Hubei province, ground zero of China’s outbreak.

Mainland China has now recorded 81,054 coronavirus cases since the start of the outbreak, and 3,261 deaths, including six on Saturday. A total of 59,432 patients had recovered, according to the National Health Commission.

Here are the updates:

Singapore bans tourists

Travel restrictions are also tightened for work pass holders, with only those providing essential services, such as in health care and transport, allowed to enter.

The restrictions come after regional neighbours such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand announced similar measures, and follow a spike in imported cases in Singapore over the past week. The city state also reported its first two virus deaths on Saturday.

Emirates suspends flights

Dubai carrier Emirates Airline announced on Sunday it will suspend all passenger flights from March 25 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Today we made the decision to temporarily suspend all passenger flights by 25 March 2020,” the airline said on Twitter. The United Arab Emirates announced on Friday its first two deaths from the Covid-19 disease in the country.

China redirects Beijing-bound flights

All international passengers to Beijing will be redirected to 12 designated entry points located throughout China starting on Monday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China announced in an online notice on Sunday.

Beijing-bound passengers will instead arrive at Shanghai Pudong, Nanjing, Tianjin, Dalian, Qingdao, Xi'an, Shenyang, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, Hohhot, and Shijiazhuang airports.

After clearing immigration, those who meet the quarantine conditions will then be permitted to board onwards flights to the Chinese capital, the notice said.

Beijing is among the top destinations for imported cases of the new coronavirus, reporting 13 new cases on Sunday. Health authorities reported a total of 45 new imported Covid-19 infections on Sunday, the sharpest spike in cases arriving from abroad yet.

Indonesia converts Asian Games site into hospital

Indonesia has converted the former 2018 Asian Games athlete’s village in central Jakarta into a hospital to treat Covid-19 patients, as confirmed infection cases continued to rise to 541 on Sunday.

Achmad Yurianto, the government spokesperson for Covid-19, said in a press conference that the temporary hospital would be ready to use on Monday, in addition to a nearby five-star hotel which would also be used as a temporary hospital.

“The hospital will be used to treat patients with mild symptoms, while patients with severe cases and complications will be treated at the main hospitals that have more equipment,” Yurianto said.

Four towers with 2,400 rooms have been converted and modified in accordance with health protocols to treat Covid-19 patients. They are equipped with a lab, pharmacy, radiology and intensive care unit.

Yurianto said 10 more patients died of the fatal infection, bringing the national death toll to 48, while nine more patients have recovered, for a total of 29.

Italy shuts factories as daily toll nears 800

The Italian government is closing all non-essential production activities in connection with the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said.

Among other things, supermarkets, banks, post office and pharmacies will remain open, Conte added.

He spoke of the “greatest challenge since the Second World War”.

Italy reported almost 800 new coronavirus deaths on Saturday with the outbreak showing no signs of abating despite ever stricter curfews being enforced nationwide.

The Civil Protection Authority said 4,825 people had died, an increase of 793 compared with the day before, making it the highest daily fatality figure since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

The number of total infections rose by more than 4,800 to 53,578. Italy is the country with the most officially reported deaths due to the coronavirus in the world.

India’s 14-hour nationwide curfew

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an address to the nation last week urged citizens to stay indoors from 7am to 9pm – a move that he said would be a crucial test for a country to assess its abilities to fight the pandemic.

“Let us all be a part of this curfew, which will add tremendous strength to the fight against the Covid-19 menace,” Modi tweeted minutes before the curfew commenced. “The steps we take now will help in the times to come,” he said in the tweet.

There are concerns that the number of cases may be far higher than reported in India, the second-most populous country with over 1.3 billion inhabitants. Four people have died so far.

A week-long ban on all international flights ordered by the government also came into effect on Sunday.

Thailand cases surge

Thailand’s confirmed coronavirus cases rose by one-third to nearly 600, its health ministry announced on Sunday, as fears of a full-blown crisis take hold in a country largely spared until now.

The spike was mainly in the capital, the ministry said, while warning residents of Bangkok not to leave and risk spreading the virus around the country.

“We would like you to stay home. Do not travel upcountry,” said health ministry official Taweesin Visanuyothin.

Malaysia’s army deploys to support lockdown

Malaysia’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that a tenth person had died after contracting the Covid-19 respiratory condition caused by the new coronavirus.

The event is the source for most of the tripling of Malaysia's caseload from 428 a week ago, according to the Health Ministry.

Ministry director general Noor Hisham Abdullah said during an online-only press conference that doctors had diagnosed 123 new cases of the virus since Saturday, taking the country's total to 1,306, the third-highest in the Asia-Pacific region after China and South Korea.

Earlier on Sunday, the Malaysian military was deployed to support police patrolling a lockdown that started on Wednesday and will run until the end of the month.

Police had complained that people were not adhering to the terms of the lockdown, which state that people should only go outdoors to buy “essential” items at grocery shops and pharmacies.

Tokyo organisers quietly plan for potential delay

While the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted sports events around the world, Japan has been steadfast in saying that the Games will go on. The top government spokesman on Wednesday said Tokyo wasn’t preparing for postponement.

The options, which include scaling back the Games or holding them without spectators, would be debated by the organising committee at the end of March, the official said. The second source, who is also close to the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, confirmed that postponement was being discussed, including delays of one or two years.

South Korea’s new cases back under 100 mark

South Korea reported 98 new cases of the novel coronavirus, closing an up-and-down week in double-digit figures.

According to Korea’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), two more people who tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, also died in the past day, bringing the total death toll in the country to 104.

Following a 147-cases jump on Saturday, the 98 new infections brought the country’s total to 8,897. The uptick over the last few days followed a days-long downward trend in new cases.

The pace of daily new infections appeared to be slowing since the second week of this month as health authorities completed extensive testing of 210,000 Shincheonji followers, according to South Korean news agency Yonhap.

About 60 per cent of the confirmed cases – including 43 of the new ones – have been linked to a branch of the Shincheonji religious sect in the south-eastern city of Daegu.

First cases confirmed in Gaza Strip

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced the first two cases of the coronavirus in the Gaza Strip early Sunday.

The ministry said the cases were two people who returned recently from Pakistan. It said they had been moved to isolation at a hospital in Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip.

The development added to fears of a potential outbreak in the crowded enclave, which has an overstretched health care system after years of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade and Palestinian political division.

The blockade has rendered Gaza off limits to foreign tourists, and Israel and Egypt have shut their borders with the territory as part of measures aimed at containing the virus. Palestinians returning home can still enter Gaza, but are sent to quarantine centres.

Australia closes pubs, clubs, restaurants, gyms

Australia will enforce more stringent controls to slow the spread of the coronavirus, closing pubs, casinos, restaurants and other venues from Monday after the number of infections surged past 1,000.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said authorities were compelled to ramp up their response after many Australians flouted social-distance guidelines, with thousands of people flocking to beaches at the weekend and socialising in bars.

“What we saw was a disregard of those social distancing practices as people turned up to the beach in large numbers and crammed venues,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra after a meeting of the national Cabinet late Sunday. “That sent a very clear message that social distancing practices are not being observed as well as they could be.”

Classrooms should remain open until the end of this term, though parents could take their children out of school if they preferred, Morrison said. Casinos, nightclubs, gyms, churches and other places of worship are among other venues that will be closed under the Stage 1 measures that will be reviewed monthly.

Trump offers coronavirus ‘cooperation’ to Kim

A senior Trump administration official confirmed Trump sent the letter and said it was “consistent with his efforts to engage global leaders during the ongoing pandemic”.

Trump “expressed his intent to render cooperation in the anti-epidemic work, saying that he was impressed by the efforts made by the Chairman to defend his people from the serious threat of the epidemic,” North Korean state news agency KCNA reported. It did not say when the letter was received.

Russia sends virus experts to Italy

Russia on Sunday sent the first of nine military planes which are to take a total of 100 army virus experts and doctors to Italy to help fight the coronavirus pandemic there.

The Russian defence ministry said the aid mission was agreed by President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who spoke on the phone on Saturday evening, the Kremlin said.

The military transport planes arrived overnight at an aerodrome outside Moscow and eight medical teams were ready to fly out with mobile aerosol disinfecting units and medical equipment, the defence ministry said.

Russia has a total of 306 confirmed cases of coronavirus so far. Italy’s death toll reached 4,825 on Saturday.

Iraq under nationwide lockdown

Iraq on Sunday imposed a total nationwide lockdown until March 28 to fight the coronavirus, as the number of cases grew and the death toll climbed to 20.

Most of Iraq’s 18 provinces had so far imposed their own local curfews but the new measures would include the whole of the country, according to a new decision by the government’s crisis cell.

Schools, universities and other gathering places would remain closed, as would the country’s multiple international airports, it said in a statement.

Many had feared a potential influx of cases from neighbouring Iran, where 1,685 people have died after contracting the Covid-19 respiratory illness, according to the latest official toll on Sunday.

Britain tells shoppers to stop panic buying

The British government on Saturday urged people to stop panic buying during the coronavirus crisis, claiming there was enough food for everyone.

With supermarket shelves still being stripped of essential items, including toilet paper, officials said there was no need for panic.

The plea to stop panic buying came as health department figures Saturday showed that 233 people have now died from Covid-19 in the UK, with the number of those testing positive for the virus standing at 5,018.

Asia-Pacific airlines take social distancing to the skies

Spanish PM says worst is yet to come

Spain’s death toll from the coronavirus epidemic soared to 1,720 on Sunday from 1,326 the day before, when the country’s prime minister had praised the nation and called on citizens to persevere.

The number of registered cases in the country rose to 28,572 on Sunday from 24,926 in the previous tally announced on Saturday, according to multiple media reports.

Additional reporting by Dewey Sim, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters