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5.20pm BST

Africa will get priority treatment for the Group of Seven’s pledged 870 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine, a senior World Health Organization adviser said on Monday.

“You will see that Africa is one of the most vulnerable, under-served (areas), so the priority would be for doses to go… to the African continent writ large. Those numbers will be sorted out the coming weeks,” Bruce Aylward, a senior WHO adviser and coordinator of the ACT (Access to Covid-19 Tools) Accelerator, told an online news briefing from Geneva.

5.20pm BST

Italy reported 36 coronavirus-related deaths on Monday against 26 the day before, the health ministry said, while the daily tally of new infections fell to 907 from 1,390.

Italy has registered 127,038 deaths linked to Covid-19 since its outbreak emerged in February last year, the second-highest toll in Europe after Britain and the eight-highest in the world. The country has reported 4.25 million cases to date.

Patients in hospital with Covid – not including those in intensive care – stood at 3,465 on Monday, down from 3,542 a day earlier.

There were 11 new admissions to intensive care units, down from 20 on Sunday. The total number of intensive care patients fell to 536 from a previous 565.

Some 79,524 tests for Covid-19 were carried out in the past day, compared with a previous 134,136, the health ministry said.

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