LATEST: coronavirus infection rate and deaths in Italy

The total number of deaths has now passed 8000, and more than 80.000 cases have been detected in Italy, according to the latest official data on Thursday.

The number of deaths reported by coronaviruses in Italy in the last 24 hours was 712, an increase compared to the total of 683 yesterday, according to the latest data from the Italian Civil Protection Department.

There was some confusion as the ministry initially reported 661 new deaths, but later added the figure of the Piedmontese regime, for a total of 712.

6.153 new infections were reported across Italy in the past 24 hours, around 1.000 more than the previous day.

The total number of cases detected in Italy since the beginning of the epidemic has exceeded 80.500.

This includes 10.361 patients recovered and a total of 8.215 died.

While the estimated mortality rate is ten percent in Italy, experts say this is unlikely to be the real figure, the head of Civil Protection said there are likely to be up to ten times more cases in the country than are been detected,

The rate of coronavirus infection in Italy had slowed for four consecutive days from Sunday to Wednesday, fueling hopes that the epidemic was slowing down in Italy.

But things seemed less certain on Thursday after the infection rate rose again, in the most affected region of Lombardy and elsewhere in Italy.

Most of the infections and deaths are still in Lombardy, where the first cases of community transmission were recorded at the end of February and in other northern regions.

There have also been worrying signs in the southern and central regions, such as Campania around Naples and Lazio around Rome, as deaths increased on Wednesday and Thursday.

Italian authorities fear that more cases will now be seen in the southern regions, after many people traveled from north to south before or shortly after the introduction of national quarantine measures on 12 March.

The world is closely watching the signs of improvement from Italy, with politicians around the world evaluating whether to implement their own quarantine measures are looking for evidence that the measure has worked.

Previously, experts had predicted that the number of cases would peak in Italy at some point from March 23 onwards, perhaps as early as early April.