Confirmed coronavirus infections continue to soar in many parts of the US and Europe. In some cases, so has anger over the restrictions governments put in place to try to stem the tide.
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Oklahoma, Illinois, New Mexico and Michigan were among US states announcing new record highs in daily confirmed cases on Saturday, a day after a nationwide daily record of more than 83,000 reported infections, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Dr Joneigh Khaldun, Michigan's medical chief, said it was "now more important than ever that people take this seriously". Her state's 3338 new COVID-19 cases topped the old record by more than 1300.
German authorities reported a record one-day total of new coronavirus cases while Spain and Italy debated how to control the resurgent virus amid public push-back to curfews despite a global death toll topping 1.1 million people.
In Italy, officials huddled with regional authorities on Saturday to determine what new restrictions could be imposed as confirmed cases surpassed half a million.
Premier Giuseppe Conte has said he does not want to put Italy under severe lockdown again. In past days, several governors ordered overnight curfews to stop people congregating at night outside bars and other venues.
One such curfew fuelled anger in Naples, triggering a violent clash by protesters with police.
Elsewhere, police in Warsaw, Poland, used tear gas and pepper spray to disperse protesters angry over new virus restrictions, and anti-lockdown demonstrators gathered in London's Trafalgar Square.
Italy's one-day new caseload of confirmed infections crept closer to 20,000 on Saturday, a slightly bigger daily increase than Friday. The nation's death toll, second highest in Europe after Britain's, rose to 37,210.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez planned to meet his cabinet on Sunday to prepare a new state of emergency, a strategy used twice since the start of the pandemic.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel urged citizens again to reduce their number of social contacts as the nation recorded a new daily high for infections.
The 14,714 cases reported on Saturday includes cases from Friday and Thursday because of a data outage at the country's disease control agency on Thursday. Forty-nine more people died, bringing the overall death toll past 10,000.
In South America, Colombia became the eight country to reach one million coronavirus cases on Saturday. Two of the others are also in Latin America: Argentina and Brazil, which has more than five million confirmed cases.
In the US, the virus has claimed about 240,000 lives. The total US caseload reported on Friday was 83,757, topping the 77,362 reported on July 16.
Underlining the severity of the crisis was news the chief of staff to Vice-President Mike Pence tested positive for the virus. Marc Short's diagnosis follows President Donald Trump and a number of White House staff and senior Republicans becoming infected in recent weeks.
A spokesman said Pence and his wife had tested negative and he would continue his campaign schedule for the November 3 election.
Australian Associated Press
