Athens, Nov 12 (IANS): The Greek government announced on Wednesday a nationwide curfew starting from Friday evening as a new daily record of 43 Covid-19 deaths was reported.

Starting from Nov. 13, the country will go under curfew from 9:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. with only a few exemptions for work, health reasons, and walking pets, Deputy Minister for Civil Protection and Crisis Management Nikos Hardalias announced.

The new restrictive measure comes as the numbers of intubated and fatalities, in particular, were on the rise, despite the start of a second nationwide lockdown last week, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The National Public Health Organization (EODY) reported on Wednesday 2,752 new infections in the past 24 hours, which brought the total confirmed cases to 63,321 since the first one was diagnosed on February 26.

Since Tuesday 43 patients have died, while 297 were currently intubated.

A total of 909 people have lost their lives since the start of the pandemic in Greece.

The problem is more acute in big urban centres, according to the official figures. Breaking down Wednesday's new cases, 635 were registered in the region of Attica and 777 in the region of Thessaloniki in northern Greece.

As the world is struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, countries including Germany, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are racing to find a vaccine.

According to the website of the World Health Organization, as of Nov. 3, there were 202 Covid-19 candidate vaccines being developed worldwide, and 47 of them were in clinical trials.