Coronavirus toll at 1000 GMT Thursday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,816,908 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Thursday.

At least 128,851,200 cases of coronavirus have been registered.

The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

These figures are based on daily tolls provided by health authorities in each country and exclude later re-evaluations by statistical organisations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain.

On Wednesday, 11,978 new deaths and 637,012 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 3,869 new deaths, followed by United States with 1,076 and Poland with 620.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 552,073 deaths from 30,460,836 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 321,515 deaths from 12,748,747 cases, Mexico with 203,210 deaths from 2,238,887 cases, India with 162,927 deaths from 12,221,665 cases, and Britain with 126,713 deaths from 4,345,788 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Czech Republic with 248 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by San Marino with 248, Hungary with 215, Montenegro 202, Bosnia-Herzegovina 201 and Belgium 199.

Europe overall has 958,025 deaths from 43,866,034 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 783,527 deaths from 24,835,522 infections, and the United States and Canada 575,024 deaths from 31,440,882 cases.

Asia has reported 272,465 deaths from 17,928,489 cases, the Middle East 114,137 deaths from 6,524,825 cases, Africa 112,733 deaths from 4,217,914 cases, and Oceania 997 deaths from 37,535 cases.

Since the start of the pandemic, the number of tests conducted has greatly increased while testing and reporting techniques have improved, leading to a rise in reported cases.

However, the number of diagnosed cases is only a part of the real total number of infections as a significant number of less serious or asymptomatic cases always remain undetected.

As a result of corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24 hours may not correspond exactly to the previous day's tallies.