The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,176,000 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 100,829,870 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 61,298,900 are now considered recovered.

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, 16,585 new deaths and 584,147 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on the latest reports, the countries with the highest figures for new deaths were the United States with 3,618 new deaths, followed by the United Kingdom with 1,725 and Mexico with 1,623.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 429,202 deaths from 25,598,359 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 220,161 deaths from 8,996,876 cases, India with 153,847 deaths from 10,701,193 cases, Mexico with 153,639 deaths from 1,806,849 cases, and the United Kingdom with 101,887 deaths from 3,715,054 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 181 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 165, the United Kingdom 150, Czech Republic 149 and Italy 144.

Europe overall has 719,737 deaths from 32,732,486 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 584,064 deaths from 18,497,558 infections, and the United States and Canada 448,711 deaths from 26,358,475 cases.

Asia has reported 238,186 deaths from 15,062,139 cases, the Middle East 96,371 deaths from 4,652,436 cases, Africa 87,986 deaths from 3,495,128 cases, and Oceania 945 deaths from 31,656 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.

(AFP)