FILE PHOTO: French SAMU rescue team and firefighters wearing protective suits evacuate a patient in a street in Paris as France faces an aggressive progression of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) March 20, 2020.

France has recorded 112 coronavirus deaths in a day, taking its total to 562, the health ministry said on Saturday.

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There have been 14,459 confirmed cases, the ministry said in a statement.

It said 1,525 people were in severe condition out of the 6,172 who were currently in hospital. Half the severe cases were people aged under 60.

The spike came as the country experienced the fifth day of a lockdown, with around 100,000 police and gendarmes deployed across the country to enforce the new measures, with people only allowed to leave home for officially sanctioned reasons such as going to work, shopping for necessities or getting medical treatment.

The fast-spreading disease that jumped from animals to humans in China has now infected 297,090 people across the world and caused 12,755 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, triggering emergency lockdowns and injections of cash unseen since World War Two.

A total of 233 people with coronavirus have died across the UK. There have been 56 new deaths, including 53 in England.

The UK Department of Health said 5,018 people tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday –up from 3,983 on Friday.

A total of 73,000 people have been tested so far with 67,800 negative results.

In Italy the death toll leapt by 793, officials said on Saturday, an increase of 19.6% -- by far the largest daily rise in absolute terms since the contagion emerged a month ago.

Italy on Thursday overtook China as the country to register most deaths from the highly contagious virus.

It brought the total number of cases in Italy, the European country hardest hit by the virus, to 53,578 from a previous 47,021, an increase of 13.9%, the Civil Protection Agency said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

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