LONDON -- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is making "very good progress" as he continues his coronavirus recovery in hospital, Downing Street said Saturday.

The prime minister is playing games and watching classic films, and his choices of entertainment are said to include the 1987 comedy Withnail and I, and Lord of the Rings.

He has also been playing sudoku, according to Sky News.

 

The following are the latest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in European countries.

ROME -- The coronavirus pandemic has claimed 19,468 lives in locked-down Italy, bringing the total number of infections, fatalities and recoveries so far to 152,271, according to the latest data released by the country's Civil Protection Department on Saturday.

Addressing a televised press conference, Civil Protection Department Chief Angelo Borrelli said fatalities grew by 619 on a daily basis, while active infections increased by 1,996 to 100,269.

Meanwhile, 2,079 new recoveries were registered over the last 24 hours, bringing its total to 32,534.

PARIS -- With 353 deaths in hospital and 290 deaths in nursing homes in the last 24 hours, the total death toll from the virus-caused COVID-19 in France has reached 13,832, Director General of Health Jerome Salomon announced on Saturday.

According to Salomon, 2,044 new patients were hospitalized in the last 24 hours, bringing the country's total hospitalized COVID-19 patients to 31,320, including 6,883 in intensive care units (ICUs).

The number of patients in ICUs was down by 121 on a daily basis, a third-day consecutive decline.

BERLIN -- The coronavirus pandemic has placed Germany at a crossroads that will determine whether it recedes into fearfulness or becomes a more "considerate and hopeful" society, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

"We do not want to be a fearful and distrustful society," Steinmeier said in a rare televised speech, which will be broadcast on major German television networks later Saturday evening but the full text has been made available for the press.

The struggle to quell the coronavirus pandemic is "a test of our humanity." The crisis caused by COVID-19 "brings out the best and the worst in people," he said.

ATHENS -- In the last 24 hours, 72 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 and three more deaths were registered in Greece, said Sotirios Tsiodras, the Greek Health Ministry's spokesman on the novel coronavirus pandemic, on Saturday.

The total COVID-19 infections in Greece now stand at 2,081 and deaths reached 93 since the start of the outbreak in the country on Feb. 26, he told a daily press briefing.

Among the victims, 90 percent had underlying health issues or their average age was above 70.