Over 2m killed so far by COVID-19 – report

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,107,903 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to an AFP tally from official sources at 1100 GMT on Saturday.

More than 98,127,150 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 59,613,300 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, such as in Russia, Spain and Britain.

On Friday, 16,380 new deaths and 661,495 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the newest deaths were United States with 4,151 new deaths, followed by Mexico with 1,440 and United Kingdom with 1,401.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 414,107 deaths from 24,821,814 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 215,243 deaths from 8,753,920 cases, India with 153,184 deaths from 10,639,684 cases, Mexico with 147,614 deaths from 1,732,290 cases, and the United Kingdom with 95,981 deaths from 3,583,907 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to population is Belgium with 178 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Czech Republic 143, United Kingdom 141 and Italy 140.

Europe has 692,687 deaths from 31,782,078 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 568,016 from 17,966,820 infections, and the United States and Canada 432,904 from 25,557,559 cases.

Asia has reported 234,399 deaths from 14,858,277 cases, the Middle East 95,095 from 4,535,883 cases, Africa 83,857 from 3,394,935 cases, and Oceania 945 from 31,606 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 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.