NEW YORK — Black Americans, who have suffered disproportionately from the coronavirus, have shown a more intense interest in news about the pandemic compared to whites. Those were the consistent findings in a Pew Research Center survey taken in late April when COVID-19 was dominating the news.

For example, 26 precent of blacks reported discussing the virus “almost all the time” with others, compared to 10 percent of whites who say that. Forty-eight percent of blacks told Pew they were closely following news about the local availability of coronavirus tests, compared to 25 percent of whites.

Similarly, almost half of black people questioned (47 percent) said they were following stories about local hospitals closely, while a quarter of whites (24 percent) said the same thing. Roughly half of blacks had an intense interest in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, with 34 percent of whites saying the same.

The margin of error in Pew's American News Pathways Project is plus or minus 1.5 percent.

As people took to the streets Saturday to decry the death of George Floyd the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States surpassed 110,000, according to NBC News' accounting of virus data.

The nation has seen 1,916,237 cases and 110,041 deaths related to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the data. One month ago President Donald Trump, who has revised his estimation of the pandemic's death toll upward multiple times, said he believed it could reach 100,000 when all was said and done.

Johns Hopkins University of Medicine counts 6,804,044 cases worldwide and 362,678 deaths, with the United States leading in raw numbers for both categories.

On Saturday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has been hardest hit by the virus, said Friday's COVID-19 death toll of 35 marked a "record low" since the pandemic struck.

North Carolina reported 1,370 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday — the third straight day the state has set a record for new cases. 

State officials reported 1,189 new cases on Thursday and 1,289 on Friday.

The numbers bring the state's total coronavirus cases to 34,625, with 992 deaths, including 26 new deaths reported Saturday.

The spike comes more than two weeks after North Carolina lifted its stay-at-home rules, allowing for limited social gatherings and letting restaurants reopen to customers with reduced capacity.

Iraq recorded 1,252 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, its highest daily total yet, the Ministry of Health said. 

The total number of cases in the conflict-torn country now stands at 11,098, with 318 deaths, according to the ministry.

Health officials fear the deadly virus may be sweeping through the Middle East as part of a broader second wave, with neighboring Iran and Gulf countries also experiencing a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases. 

Beijing's municipal government on Saturday is lowering its emergency response level to the second-lowest as it relates to the coronavirus pandemic. 

The change will lift most restrictions on people traveling from Wuhan and the surrounding province of Hubei — where the virus first appeared late last year. Beijing residential compounds will not be required to conduct temperature checks and masks no longer must be worn for outdoor activities. Kindergartens will reopen and other grades still suspended will restart classes.

Beijing has reported no new cases of local transmission in at least 50 days, and as many as 90 days in some districts.

China recorded three new confirmed cases of the virus as of Saturday — down from five the day before — and no new deaths, the National Health Commission reported. All three of the cases were imported, the commission said, bringing its national total to 83,030.

Greta Thunberg helped to launch a crowdfunding campaign to buy medical supplies and provide telemedicine services to residents in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, she tweeted on Saturday, where a lack of robust health services has made the coronavirus outbreak particularly devastating.

The campaign “aims to help traditional communities of the Amazonian territory battle COVID-19 - who are disproportionately hit by the pandemic,” the tweet said.

This comes one day after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro threatened to pull Brazil out of the World Health Organization after the agency warned Latin American governments about the risk of lifting lockdowns before slowing the spread of the outbreak.

Bolsonaro has faced continued criticism for his response to the outbreak, as Brazil now has the second-highest number of infections globally — behind only the U.S. As of Saturday, the country has reported more than 646,000 cases and 35,000 deaths.

A wedding party contributed to a new surge in coronavirus infections in Iran, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday, but insisted the country had no option but to keep its economy open despite warnings of a second wave of the epidemic.

Iran, which has been gradually relaxing its lockdown since mid-April, has reported a sharp rise of new daily infections in recent days. Thursday's toll of 3,574 new cases was the highest since February — when the outbreak was first reported.

"At one location, we witnessed a peak in this epidemic, the source of which was a wedding that caused problems for the people, health workers and losses to the economy and the country's health system," Rouhani said on state TV. He did not say when or where the wedding took place.

New cases dipped to 2,886 on Friday, bringing Iran's total cases to more than 167,000, with over 8,000 deaths. Health officials have been warning of a second wave of the outbreak, but say a reason for the surge in new cases could be wider testing.