Surging fatalities in Latin America helped push the global coronavirus death toll above 400,000 on Sunday, even as Europe emerged from its virus lockdown with infections increasingly under control there.

Pope Francis, addressing Catholics in Saint Peter’s Square on Sunday for the first time since the health emergency began, said the worst was over in Italy and expressed sympathy for those in hard-hit Latin American countries.

“Your presence in the square is a sign that in Italy the acute phase of the epidemic is over,” Francis said as the Vatican confirmed it had no more cases of Covid-19 among its employees or within Vatican City.

“Unfortunately in other countries – I am thinking of some of them – the virus continues to claim many victims.”

Brazil has the world’s third-highest toll – more than 36,000 dead – but President Jair Bolsonaro has criticised stay-at-home measures imposed by local officials and has threatened to leave the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Tolls are also rising sharply in Mexico, Peru and Ecuador, while in Chile, total deaths have now reached 2,290.

Chilean health minister Jaime Manalich said on Sunday that some miscounting pointed out by the WHO in March and April was corrected, pushing the toll up from 1,541 on Saturday.

But in communist Cuba, President Miguel Diaz-Canel declared the pandemic “under control” after the island nation registered an eighth straight day without a death from Covid-19, leaving the toll at 83.

The number of infections has reached more than seven million worldwide since Covid-19 emerged late last year, forcing much of the globe into lockdown and pushing the world economy towards its worst downturn since the Great Depression.

However, fears of a second wave of the deadly disease have given way to grave worries over the economy, encouraging European countries to reopen borders and businesses, and those throughout Asia and Africa to slowly return to normal life.

As of 1900 GMT, a total of 400,581 deaths were recorded worldwide, according to an AFP tally using official figures – a number that has doubled in the past month and a half.

While almost half of the deaths have been recorded in Europe, the US remains the hardest-hit nation with more than 110,000 deaths, followed by Britain, whose toll exceeds 40,500.

Late on Sunday, the US daily death toll, at 691, was the lowest it had been in a week, shows a tally by Johns Hopkins University in the US state of Maryland.

In Europe, countries are slowly working towards a post-pandemic normal and trying to revive tourist sectors in time for the summer and return to business.

The UK government said on Sunday it would reopen places of worship for individual prayer on June 15.

The EU said it could reopen borders to travellers from outside the region in early July after some countries within the bloc dropped restrictions on other European visitors.