MADRID, Spain (AFP) – More than 900 people died in Spain over the past 24 hours for the second day running, government figures showed on Friday, although the rate of new infections and deaths continued to slow.

Spain has the world’s second-highest death toll after Italy with the virus so far claiming 10,935 lives — 932 in the past day — from 117,710 confirmed cases.

But health ministry figures confirm a consistent downward trend in the rate of new cases and fatalities.

The latest number show the rate of infections up by 6.8 per cent, compared with 7.9 per cent on Thursday and 20 per cent in the middle of last week.

And the daily rise in deaths also slowed to 9.3 per cent on Friday, down from 10.5 percent on Thursday, and a big drop from the 27-percent increase on March 25.

But even with statistics that are believed to be conservative in showing the extent of the epidemic, Spain on Friday neared 118,000 cases, second only to the United States. Official Health Ministry data showed that 7,472 of those infections had been in the past 24 hours.

Italy, with more than 115,000 reported cases as of Friday morning, has seen new infections levelling off after three weeks of the West’s first nationwide shutdown.

Spain also registered 932 new deaths, 18 less than its daily record of 950 the day before.