The total number of cases in Italy, the European country hardest hit by the virus, rose to 35,713 from a previous 31,506, up 13.35pc, the Civil Protection Agency said.
Of those originally infected, 4,025 had fully recovered compared to 2,941 the day before. Some 2,257 people were in intensive care against a previous 2,060.
The northern region of Lombardy, on the frontline of Italy's battle against the coronavirus, appealed to recently retired doctors and nurses on Wednesday to return to work and help colleagues overwhelmed by the crisis.
Adding to the problem, doctors, nurses and hospital porters have themselves fallen sick, and some have died.
The Gimbe Foundation research group, using data supplied by the national health authority, said that between March 11-17, some 2,529 health workers had tested positive for coronavirus - 8.3pc of the national total.
"I make a heartfelt appeal to all the doctors, nurses and medical personnel who have retired in the last two years ... to help us in this emergency," Lombardy Governor Attilio Fontana told a news conference.
He also urged staff in private medical facilities and first aid specialists to step forward as the region rushed to convert the Fiera Milano exhibition centre into a makeshift hospital to add badly needed intensive care beds.
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Underscoring the urgent need for more medical staff, the government announced on Tuesday it was rushing 10,000 student doctors into service nine months ahead of time, scrapping their final exams in an effort to relieve the mounting pressure.
Officials warned on Wednesday that if the incidence of new cases did not slow, they might have to extend an unprecedented lockdown imposed last week to halt infections.
The government ordered restaurants, bars and most shops to shut down until March 25. In addition, it shut schools and universities and told everyone to stay at home unless absolutely essential until April 3.
Since the restrictions were ramped up on March 12, the number of new cases has more than doubled, while deaths have more than tripled.
"I do not know if the measures will be extended beyond April 3. We will make a decision based on the numbers and events. I cannot rule it out. We will see in the coming days," said Infrastructure Minister Paola De Micheli.
Fontana said even tougher curbs might be needed if the situation did not improve and said too many people were defying the lockdown.
"Unfortunately, the contagion numbers are not falling, they continue to be high," he said. "Every time you leave your home, you are putting yourself and others at risk. We are asking people to make sacrifices to save lives."
Official data show that nearly 30,000 people have been confirmed as positive for the coronavirus in Italy, the highest number outside China where the virus first emerged.
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But strict testing rules mean only patients hospitalised with severe symptoms are normally being swab tested.
While no detailed data is available, officials, nurses and relatives say there has been a spike in nursing home deaths in the worst affected regions of northern Italy since the virus emerged, and they are not showing up in coronavirus statistics.
"There are significant numbers of people who have died but whose death hasn't been attributed to the coronavirus because they died at home or in a nursing home and so they weren't swabbed," said Giorgio Gori, mayor of the town of Bergamo.
Gori said there had been 164 deaths in his town in the first two weeks of March this year, of which 31 were attributed to the coronavirus. That compares with 56 deaths over the same period last year.
Even adding the 31 coronavirus deaths to that total would leave 77 additional deaths, an increase that suggests the virus may have caused significantly more deaths than officially recorded.
Emilio Tanzi, director of Cremona Solidale, a 460-bed residence in the northern town of Cremona, said nursing homes were on the front lines of a crisis that predominantly affected the elderly, who nevertheless have not had adequate support.
He said there had been a significant and "anomalous" increase in deaths since about March 2, when the spread of the epidemic began to gather pace in Italy.
But there was no way of knowing for sure whether they were due to COVID-19, the disease associated with the coronavirus, he added.
Tanzi declined to give full numbers, but said on just one day last week there had been 18 deaths at his facility of patients with respiratory difficulties - symptoms associated with the coronavirus.
"We don't know if there have been coronavirus deaths because the swabs haven't been done," he said. "We've certainly seen high fevers and breathing difficulties."
"If we'd been in a position to know, we could have isolated these patients properly and avoided the epidemic."
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