Iran reports record daily COVID-19 death toll 

Iran's Health Ministry said on Tuesday that another 200 people infected with the coronavirus died in the past 24 hours, marking the country's biggest daily death toll since the outbreak started.

The total number of COVID-19 fatalities in Iran now stands at 11,931.

Meanwhile, the total number of confirmed infections climbed by 2,637 to 245,688, out of which over 207,000 have recovered.

Iran, one of the countries in the Middle East hardest hit by the virus, first detected COVID-19 in the city of Qom on February 19.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged in late 2019 in China's Hubei province, and the virus has spread to more than 200 countries and territories since then.

To date, COVID-19 cases surpassed 11,769,000 globally, resulting in more than 6,762,000 recoveries and over 541,000 deaths.

On February 11, the WHO officially named the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) as COVID-19, and on March 11, declared it a pandemic.