ROME — Italy registered 10,872 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the 24-hour period ending Monday afternoon.
But as usually happens on weekends, relatively few swab tests were conducted, fewer than 90,000 – that’s half the amount done just three days earlier.
Since Sunday, 161 more coronavirus patients were admitted to intensive care wards, with more than 2,700 currently occupying ICU beds in the country that is grappling with a second surge of COVID-19 after a dramatic drop over the summer in daily caseloads.
Italy on Monday added 415 deaths to what is Europe’s highest national toll of pandemic dead, raising to 69,214 the known total to date of COVID-19 deaths.