Britain saw the worst day for coronavirus casualties so far as the number of deaths in a day rose 87 to total 422 so far.
Patients reporting positive tests also rose to 8,077.
Meanwhile, the number of people dying from the virus hit 514 in 24 hours in Spain, making the death toll 2,696 as almost 40,000 reported as infected.
This includes more than 5,000 frontline health workers.
The Spanish data is the worst in Europe after Italy, where more than 6,000 have died but the outbreak shows signs of waning. Almost 750 Italians died from the virus in the past day.
Global Covid-19 lockdown
In the US, New York alone has reported 210 deaths and almost 26,000 infections – half of all cases in the country.
Britain has joined France, Spain and Italy in lockdown forcing the nation into quarantine for at least 12 weeks as the government closed shops and warned everyone but key workers to stay at home.
More than 1.3 billion Indians are readying for the country to go in lockdown.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock called for people to maintain social distancing to save lives in the first online press conference from 10 Downing Street.
The media briefing was conducted through video conferencing software with journalists asking questions from remote locations.
Appeal for hospital volunteers
Hancock revealed the government expects a temporary 4,000 bed coronavirus hospital to become operational next week in London’s Excel Centre, a massive exhibition hall complex. The Nightingale Hospital will become a critical care facility for the capital’s covid-19 patients as the NHS fears hospitals will be overrun.
He also appealed for 250,000 volunteers to work alongside the NHS and confirmed more than 11,000 retired doctors and nurses were returning to aid hard-pressed hospital staff.
Speaking in The Commons, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced he was still working on a fair way to financially support the self-employed after a clamour of protests from freelance workers.
“There are genuine practical and principled reasons why it is incredibly complicated to design an analogous scheme to the one that we have for employed workers but I am determined to find a way to support them,” he said.
