Coronavirus toll at 1000 GMT Wednesday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,874,984 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Wednesday.

At least 132,382,700 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 Tuesday, 12,384 new deaths and 644,889 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 4,195, followed by the United States with 1,105 and Poland with 638.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 556,528 deaths from 30,847,167 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 336,947 deaths from 13,100,580 cases, Mexico with 205,002 deaths from 2,256,380 cases, India with 166,177 deaths from 12,801,785 cases, and the United Kingdom with 126,882 deaths from 4,364,529 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is the Czech Republic with 255 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 229, Bosnia-Herzegovina 215, Montenegro 211 and Belgium 201.

Europe overall has 978,685 deaths from 45,199,611 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 805,865 deaths from 25,509,650 infections, and the United States and Canada 579,637 deaths from 31,861,808 cases.

Asia has reported 278,872 deaths from 18,724,429 cases, the Middle East 116,599 deaths from 6,755,503 cases, Africa 114,322 deaths from 4,292,665 cases, and Oceania 1,004 deaths from 39,038 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.