The Ministry of Health informed on Monday (March 23) shortly after 8pm about further 57 coronavirus infections. The tally for that day was 116 confirmed cases and death of one person who had been infected earlier on. The 83-year-old male died in a hospital in Tychy, Silesia. In total, 749 people have been infected since the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic.

Poland's health ministry reported 116 new coronavirus infection cases on Monday, March 23.

In total, 749 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed so far, of which 8 people died.

Furthermore, the ministry informed about the death of the eighth person with coronavirus.

"We regret to inform you that eighth person infected with coronavirus has died - it's an 83-year-old man who died in a hospital in Tychy. He had been suffering from underlying medical conditions" - the ministry informed.

Over 15.000 dead worldwide

More than 351,300 people have been infected by the novel coronavirus across the world and 15,339 have died, according to a Reuters tally.

Infections have been reported by 192 countries outside China.

"More than 300,000 cases of COVID-19 have now been reported to WHO. From almost every country in the world. That's heart breaking. The pandemic is accelerating. It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach the first 100,000 cases. Eleven days for the second hundred thousand cases and just four days for the third hundred thousand cases" - World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a conference on Monday.

He called for global political commitment to change the trajectory of the pandemic, urging countries to take both defensive and attacking measures.

"Asking people to stay at home and other social distancing measures are an important way of slowing down the spread of the virus and buying time, but they are defensive measures," Tedros told an online briefing for more than 300 journalists.

"To win we need to attack the virus with aggressive and targeted tactics - testing every suspect case, isolating and caring for every confirmed cases and tracing and quarantining every close contact."

Tedros also said that there were alarming reports of large number of health workers being infected and called for their protection.