Worldwide coronavirus cases cross 18.3 million

More than 18.3 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 692,854 have died, according to a Reuters tally published on Tuesday.

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Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since the first cases were identified in China in December 2019.

India’s daily confirmed coronavirus infections have topped 50,000 for a seventh straight day.

An Indian health worker helps another wear personnel protection equipment before conducting tests in Gauhati, India. AP

Tuesday’s spike of 52,050 new positive cases recorded in the past 24 hours took the national total to 1,855,745, according to the Health Ministry database.

The ministry also reported 803 new deaths, taking total fatalities up to 38,938.

Several political leaders have either tested positive for the coronavirus or gone into quarantine over the last few days.

Since Sunday, India’s powerful home minister Amit Shah and the chiefs of two big states have been hospitalized with COVID-19. On Monday, Tripura state’s chief minister and India’s law and justice minister also went into isolation.

People walk through a small deserted laneway usually packed with open cafes and people in Melbourne. AFP

Australia’s hard-hit Victoria state has banned people who should be self-isolating from exercising outside their homes and introduced tougher fines for people with COVID-19 who continue to go to work.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said that military and health teams would repeatedly and randomly door-knock homes to ensure people who should be self-isolating were at home.

Teams had door-knocked more than 3,000 homes and could not find more than 800 people who should have been home because they were awaiting a test result or had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Andrews said the government was removing the lawful excuse that someone who should be self-isolating had gone out to exercise.

"It’s difficult to enforce this if people have a lawful excuse and if some people are going to use that to try and justify other decisions -- they were at no point getting exercise,” Andrews said.

The government has also increased the fine for failing to self-isolate.

Victoria reported 439 new cases overnight and 11 new deaths.