Washington: The United States on Friday become the first country to record more than 2,000 coronavirus deaths in one day, with 2,108 fatalities in the past 24 hours, according to the Johns Hopkins University tally.

The US has now recorded 18,586 deaths and is closing in on the toll of 18,849 dead in Italy, which has seen the most fatalities so far in the global pandemic.

America is also approaching half a million confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 496,535 as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Saturday), an increase of 35,098 in the past 24 hours.

The global coronavirus death toll topped 100,000 Friday as Easter celebrations around the world kicked off in near-empty churches with billions of people stuck indoors to halt the pandemic's deadly march.

It came as the World Health Organization issued a dire warning that prematurely lifting lockdown restrictions -- affecting more than half the planet's population -- could spark a dangerous resurgence of the disease.

Extraordinary measures from New York to Naples to New Delhi have seen businesses and schools closed in a desperate bid to halt the virus's spread, and the IMF has said the world now faces the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

More than 1.6 million people have been infected globally and the death toll hit 100,859 on Friday -- with nearly 70 percent of fatal cases in hard-hit Europe.