Coronavirus toll at 1100 GMT Thursday

PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,621,295 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Thursday.

At least 117,982,000 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, 9,765 new deaths and 460,039 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 2,286 new deaths, followed by the United States with 1,455 and Mexico with 699.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 529,263 deaths from 29,154,666 cases. After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 270,656 deaths from 11,202,305 cases, Mexico with 192,488 deaths from 2,144,558 cases, India with 158,189 deaths from 11,285,561 cases, and the United Kingdom with 124,987 deaths from 4,234,924 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is the Czech Republic with 211 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Belgium with 193, Slovenia 188, United Kingdom 184 and Montenegro 174.

Europe overall has 886,000 deaths from 39,232,567 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 707,403 deaths from 22,373,999 infections, and the United States and Canada 551,594 deaths from 30,050,369 cases.

Asia has reported 261,469 deaths from 16,474,620 cases, the Middle East 107,165 deaths from 5,823,847 cases, Africa 106,706 deaths from 3,993,632 cases, and Oceania 958 deaths from 32,967 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.