Coronavirus toll at 1000 GMT Saturday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,917,316 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Saturday.

At least 134,648,510 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 Friday, 13,924 new deaths and 769,876 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 3,693 new deaths, followed by United States with 931 and Mexico with 874.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 561,074 deaths from 31,085,251 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 348,718 deaths from 13,373,174 cases, Mexico with 207,020 deaths from 2,272,064 cases, India with 168,436 deaths from 13,205,926 cases, and the United Kingdom with 127,040 deaths from 4,365,461 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Czech Republic with 259 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 238, Bosnia-Herzegovina 222, Montenegro 216 and Bulgaria 204.

Europe overall has 992,995 deaths from 46,016,590 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 823,259 deaths from 26,008,344 infections, and the United States and Canada 584,315 deaths from 32,127,378 cases.

Asia has reported 282,857 deaths from 19,244,871 cases, the Middle East 117,693 deaths from 6,879,123 cases, Africa 115,192 deaths from 4,332,511 cases, and Oceania 1,005 deaths from 39,696 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.