Coronavirus latest: 'Largest mass fatality incident' in New York City: Report

Israel's second COVID-19 lockdown started on Friday as the Jewish High Holidays began.

The lockdown, which will last for three weeks, went into effect at 2 p.m. local time. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, begins Friday night, and is typically a time for family gatherings.

Supermarkets and pharmacies will stay open during the lockdown but schools and nonessential businesses will close.

Synagogues can stay open but there are strict rules as to how many worshippers can go inside at one time. Ten days after Rosh Hashanah is Yom Kippur; attending synagogue is an important part of both holidays.

Israel has over 179,000 people diagnosed with COVID-19. At least 1,196 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins data.

Israel's first nationwide pandemic lockdown ended in May.

New Zealand has reported no new confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the first time since Aug. 10, after a fresh outbreak was discovered in the country's most populous city.

New Zealand's Ministry of Health said Friday that there were no positive results among the 7,360 people tested for COVID-19 the previous day. It's the fourth straight day without any cases of community transmission in the nation of 5 million people, with all recent cases being detected among quarantined travelers returning from abroad.

A cluster of cases emerged in the city of Auckland last month, ending New Zealand's 102-day streak without any local transmission of the novel coronavirus. The outbreak prompted the government to impose a temporary lockdown in the region and reschedule national elections.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, New Zealand's Ministry of Health has identified 1,809 confirmed and probable COVID-19 cases as well as 25 coronavirus-related deaths. There are currently 70 active cases and four coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the country.

The number of deaths reported to the New York City's Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) more than doubled in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the nation's most populous city, according to a new report from the mayor's office.

"COVID-19 tragically represents the largest mass fatality incident in modern NYC history," the report said.

There were 65,712 deaths reported to OCME during the 2020 fiscal year, compared to 30,964 in fiscal year 2019.

"The number of deaths reported to OCME increased, corresponding to the surge in NYC deaths during the pandemic," the report said.

Meanwhile, the number of cremation requests reviewed by the OCME jumped from 17,148 to 27,863 over the past year.

"This increase came about during the months of March through June where OCME received 16,115 requests, a number that approached the entire Fiscal 2019 total," the report said. "This increase corresponds to the surge in deaths NYC experienced during the pandemic to date."

The number of decedents' remains transported by OCME and stored in the morgue also increased from 11,281 to 17,606.

New York City has counted nearly 24,000 confirmed or probable deaths from COVID-19 so far. In April, the city's COVID-19 death toll surpassed the number of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

ABC News' Aaron Katerksy contributed to this report.

The massive fireworks display that lights up London's skyline every New Year's Eve, attracting tens of thousands of people, has been canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced the decision to halt the official New Year's Eve celebrations in the British capital during an interview Friday on radio station LBC, citing concerns about further spread of the novel coronavirus.

"There will not be fireworks on New Year’s Eve this year like in previous years," Khan said. "We simply can’t afford to have the numbers of people who congregate on New Year’s Eve congregating."

As the city's COVID-19 case count continues to rise, Khan warned that new restrictions could be imposed in London if people don't follow the current social distancing rules. He said new measures could be similar to those recently announced in other areas of England, where more than 10 million people are now banned from mixing with other households outside of support bubbles while hospitality and entertainment venues have to adhere to a nightly curfew.

"Without wishing to alarm your listeners, the number of cases in London are going up; the infection rate is going up, and hospital admissions are going up," Khan told LBC. "But we aren't at a point where we would need to trigger the sort of things we need to do that you're seeing across the country."