Coronavirus toll at 1100 GMT Thursday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 1,979,596 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally from official sources at 1100 GMT on Thursday.

More than 92,321,290 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 56,637,400 are now considered recovered.

The 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.

Over Wednesday, 16,024 new deaths and 725,790 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 3,912, followed by United Kingdom with 1,564 and Brazil with 1,274.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 384,784 deaths from 23,077,435 cases. At least 6,298,082 people have been declared recovered.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 205,964 deaths from 8,256,536 cases, India with 151,727 deaths from 10,512,093 cases, Mexico with 136,917 deaths from 1,571,901 cases, and the United Kingdom with 84,767 deaths from 3,211,576 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to population is Belgium with 175 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 148, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 134, Italy 133, and Czech Republic 129.

Europe counts 640,448 deaths from 29,760,037 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 539,287 deaths from 16,855,590 infections, and the United States and Canada 402,130 deaths from 23,757,122 cases.

Asia has reported 228,110 deaths from 14,458,196 cases, the Middle East 92,975 deaths from 4,312,152 cases, Africa 75,701 deaths from 3,146,765 cases, and Oceania 945 deaths from 31,434 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 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.