Italy reported 174 new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, against 474 the day before, the country's lowest toll since 168 fatalities were registered when the country's stay-at-home orders were imposed on March 10.

The daily number of new cases also declined sharply to 1,389 from 1,900 on Saturday.

In recent weeks of the epidemic that emerged in Italy on Feb. 21, the daily death count has tended to fall on Sundays only to rise again the following day.

Nonetheless, the latest data still offers encouragement to the country as it prepares to gradually ease its eight-week-old lockdown – the longest in Europe – from Monday.

The Mediterranean country's death toll officially stands at 28,884, second only to the United States.

The number of confirmed cases amounts to 210,717, the third-highest global tally behind those of the United States and Spain.

Saturday's jump in the daily death tally, which bucked a gradual declining trend, appeared to have been due to the addition of hundreds of deaths in the northern Lombardy region in April, which had not previously been recorded.

People registered as currently carrying the illness fell to 100,179 from 100,704 on Saturday.

There were 1,501 people in intensive care on Sunday, down from 1,539 the day before, maintaining a long-running decline. Of those originally infected, 81,654 were declared recovered against 79,914 on Saturday.

The agency said 1.457 million people had been tested for the virus against 1.430 million the day before, out of a population of around 60 million.