COVID-19 cases

Europe reported 96,996 new cases, the highest total for the region ever recorded by the WHO.

Global deaths rose by 5514 to a total of 1.05 million.

The previous WHO record for new cases was 330,340 on 2 October. The agency reported a record 12,393 deaths on 17 April.

As a region, Europe is now reporting more cases than India, Brazil or the United States.

India reported 78,524 new cases, followed by Brazil at 41,906 and the United States with 38,904 new infections, according to the WHO, whose data lags the daily reports by each country.

The nation, the world's third-most infected, on Sunday reported 78,761 new cases in 24 hours, passing the number posted in the US on 17 July.

The rise comes as the government continues to lift restrictions to try to boost an economy that lost millions of jobs when the virus hit in March.

An upsurge of Covid-19 in many rural areas continues to be a major concern.

On Sunday, global infections passed the 25 million mark, with 843,000 deaths. The US remains the most affected nation, closing in on six million infections, according to Johns Hopkins University research.

The latest figures showed 10 people were in hospital, including two in intensive care.

The new outbreak has affected seven times more people than the first Covid-19 wave from March to June.

Covid-19 began to spread again after the government last month opened the border to boost tourism and abolished quarantine requirements for arriving travellers.

According to the government, about a dozen cases concerned tourists while the vast majority was the result of local transmission.

There were also two new cases in managed isolation.

There was no media conference today. In a written statement, the Health Ministry said 10 of the new community cases were clearly epidemiologically linked to the Auckland cluster.

It said six cases were linked to the Mt Roskill Evangelical Church, including four within the same household and two who attended church services.

Four other cases are contacts of previously reported confirmed cases.

Nearly 200 staff and students have been infected in the greater Seoul area over the past two weeks.

Remote learning will continue until 11 September, the Ministry of Education said.

Health authorities have warned that the country is on the brink of a nationwide outbreak.

All students in the greater Seoul area, home to over 25 million people, will now take classes online with the exception of those in their final year of high school who are due to take university entrance examinations in December.

The latest fatalities take the state's Covid-19 death toll to 438.

Yesterday's total of 116 new cases was the state's lowest in more than seven weeks .

It followed 209 new cases on Sunday and 182 on Saturday.

Premier Daniel Andrews is expected to give his regular daily update with details about the new cases later today.

Yesterday, he announced his Government would seek to change laws so that Victoria's state of emergency could be extended by another 12 months.

Irish Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said: "We are at a tipping point."

He added that a few weeks ago there were just 61 new reported cases for a seven day period but last week there were 533 cases.

The tightening of restrictions comes ahead of the reopening of schools over the next two weeks.

Taoiseach (Irish PM) Mícheál Martin said that if the current rates of COVID-19 continue to rise "it will be impossible to stop the spread of the virus to our most vulnerable and our most compromised".

Premier Daniel Andrews said 671 new coronavirus cases had been detected since yesterday and seven more people had died.

Six of the deaths have a connection to aged care.

Andrews said there was an "unacceptably high" number of community transmission cases, and the state had 760 active "mystery" COVID-19 infections where the source of the transmission was not known.

"Those mysteries, that community transmission, is in many respects our biggest challenge and the reason why we need to move to a different set of rules," he said.

There are about 30,000 Pacific islanders in Utah, and there has so far been about 1,200 cases and 13 deaths from the coronavirus among them.

Jake Fitisemanu, of the Utah Pacific Islander Health Coalition, said his organisation had been working hard to get the community to make use of available resources.

He said it had been working with the media, churches, and Pasifika officials in the governor's office.

US deaths are also rising and have recently reached the highest levels since early June, led by Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, according to the tally.

More than half of all states - 30 out of 50 - have reported record one-day increases in cases this month. Infections are rising in almost all states, based on a Reuters analysis of cases the past two weeks compared with the prior two weeks.

If Florida were a country, it would rank fourth in the world for the most new cases in a day behind the United States, Brazil and India, according to a Reuters analysis.