Coronavirus toll at 1000 GMT Thursday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,974,651 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 138,213,350 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, 13,427 new deaths and 776,939 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 3,459 new deaths, followed by India with 1,038 and United States with 859.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 564,405 deaths from 31,422,228 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 361,884 deaths from 13,673,507 cases, Mexico with 210,812 deaths from 2,291,246 cases, India with 173,123 deaths from 14,074,564 cases, and Britain with 127,161 deaths from 4,378,305 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Czech Republic with 264 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 251, Bosnia-Herzegovina 233, Montenegro 224 and Bulgaria 212.

Europe overall has 1,011,815 deaths from 47,181,750 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 846,330 deaths from 26,654,271 infections, and the United States and Canada 587,835 deaths from 32,506,610 cases.

Asia has reported 290,431 deaths from 20,309,384 cases, the Middle East 120,490 deaths from 7,135,628 cases, Africa 116,741 deaths from 4,384,944 cases, and Oceania 1,009 deaths from 40,768 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.