Coronavirus toll at 1000 GMT Thursday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 3,693,717 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 171,584,840 cases of coronavirus have been registered. The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

The figures are based on daily reports provided by health authorities in each country. They exclude revisions made by other statistical organisations, which show that the number of deaths is much higher.

The World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic's overall toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19. A large number of the less severe or asymptomatic cases also remain undetected, despite intensified testing in many countries.

On Wednesday, 12,042 new deaths and 482,800 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on the latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 2,887 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 2,507 and United States with 597.

The United States is the worst-affected country, with 595,833 deaths from 33,307,423 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 467,706 deaths from 16,720,081 cases, India with 337,989 deaths from 28,441,986 cases, Mexico with 228,146 deaths from 2,423,928 cases, and Peru with 184,942 deaths from 1,965,432 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 561 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 308, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 284, Czech Republic with 281, and Republic of North Macedonia with 261.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,166,579 deaths from 33,402,197 cases, Europe 1,138,550 deaths from 53,064,671 infections, and the United States and Canada 621,435 deaths from 34,691,951 cases.

Asia has reported 491,053 deaths from 36,844,170 cases, the Middle East 143,737 deaths from 8,664,352 cases, Africa 131,261 deaths from 4,868,568 cases, and Oceania 1,102 deaths from 48,932 cases.

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.