Authorities in Italy announced a daily death toll of 812 deaths in 24 hours, bringing the total to 11,500 fatalities.
But after nearly three weeks of a lockdown, there were some encouraging signs that the measures could be working.
The increase in new positive cases has never been lower, with an increase of 4%, half as much as four days ago (8.3%) and four times less than two weeks ago.
For the first time since the start of the pandemic in Italy, the number of people currently positive in Lombardy, the region most affected, has decreased (25,006 against 25,392 on Sunday).
Furthermore, the number of people considered healed across the country (1,590) has never been so high in a daily report.
Officials said they could be witnessing a flattening of the curve but called for people to continue to respect the measures of the lockdown.
Europe counts more cases
Spain overtook China, recording more than 85,000 cases on Monday. It is the second worst-hit country after Italy.
France registered its highest daily death toll on Monday with 418 new fatalities, bringing its death toll to over 3,000 since the beginning of the outbreak. The country also counts more than 44,000 cases.
But the director of the national health agency, Jérome Salômon, said they expected the quarantine measures to begin having an effect soon.
At least 21,000 people in France are hospitalised for COVID-19 and 64 people under the age of 30 were currently hospitalised in intensive care units, he also said.
Could be too early to tell if Italy and Spain have reached the peak
Spain, Italy and the UK have much more “extensive” problems, making it difficult to know if the peak has been reached yet, experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) said while responding to journalists.
Dr Mike Ryan who leads the WHO’s health emergencies programme said that the peak went up and down in Wuhan before it was actually reached.
But he said the cases today are really those that were contracted two weeks ago.
He added that it’s important not just to get past the peak but to test and search for cases and isolate them in order to aggressively bring down the epidemic.
“The question is how do you go down, and going down isn’t just about a lockdown and let go. To get down from the numbers, not just stabilise, requires a redoubling of public health efforts to push down,” Ryan said, expressing hope that Italy and Spain were nearly there.
He said they advised that all suspect cases are tested and isolated in a medical facility. They also said that contacts should be quarantined and ideally not at home.
Most of the transmission is now happening in the home, the WHO expert said, explaining that contacts needed to be traced so sick people could be removed from the home.