Licia Ronzulli, a senator with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, said the former prime minister “spent the night in hospital to check on his condition … but he is fine”.

Berlusconi announced on Wednesday that he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and was in quarantine at home.

Two of his children – daughter Barbara, 36, and son Luigi, 31 – have also contracted the virus, as has his companion Marta Fascina, who is some 53 years his junior.

Berlusconi, who controls Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster Mediaset SpA and once owned AC Milan, had insisted during a video conference on Wednesday that he would continue his political activities.

Regional elections are set to take place in two weeks as well as a referendum on reducing the number of Italian parliamentarians.

He is though to have contracted Covid-19 while holidaying along Sardinia’s famous jet-set Emerald Coast playground. A first test proved negative, but he was tested again after some people he met on the Italian island – including Italian businessman and former Formula One racing team Benetton managing director Flavio Briatore – tested positive, according to Italian news reports.

Berlusconi, famed for his steamy “bunga-bunga” dinner parties, grabbed headlines again in March after he reportedly split from his long-time girlfriend Francesco Pascale to date Fascina, an MP from his party.

Authorities said an existing ban on outdoor meetings of more than 10 people is being extended indoors because most recent infections have been tied to gatherings in private homes. Attendance at funerals, burials, weddings and religious celebrations, as well as group visits to museums or guided tourism will also be restricted starting on Monday, authorities said.

Nearly one-third of Spain’s new virus infections are in and around Madrid, a region of 6.6 million with high population density and a hub for economic activity for the rest of the country. At least 16 per cent of the beds in Madrid’s hospitals are occupied by Covid-19 patients, yet regional health chief Enrique Ruíz Escudero said that despite the recent trends, “the situation has nothing to do with what we went through two months ago”.

The Robert Koch Institute’s first tally was 782. It said technical problems had led to an undercount.

The higher figure is in line with the trend of increased numbers of new infections over the past four weeks that have led to fears of a second Covid-19 wave. Many have been diagnosed among travellers returning from abroad. Daily cases in Germany peaked at just over 6,000 in early April.

Meanwhile in Denmark, a drug maker is exploring whether a new class of medicines that helps people lose weight and control diabetes also has potential in fighting Covid-19.

Novo Nordisk Chief Scientific Officer Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen said in an interview that new research had shown that GLP-1 drugs, which help patients keep blood sugar levels in check, could be a “very meaningful therapy” in battling the illness.

“The early indication is that the GLP-1 class is actually beneficial in Covid-19,” he said. “That’s not unexpected because this is the class of agents that target the risk factors for bad Covid-19 outcomes.”

Novo, the world’s biggest maker of diabetes drugs, is studying the role such medicines could play as researchers and governments rush to find treatments to combat the pandemic. The US last month cleared use of convalescent plasma – which uses blood from people who have recovered from Covid-19 to help those currently infected – on an emergency basis for some cases.

Additional reporting by Associated Press, DPA, Bloomberg