Global COVID-19 cases nears 89-M mark, death toll above 1.89M with 54M recoveries

PARIS, France - The novel coronavirus has killed at least 1,899,396 people since the outbreak emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Friday.

At least 88,024,570 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 54,775,300 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, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain.

On Thursday, 14,845 new deaths and 838,720 new cases were recorded worldwide. Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were the United States with 3,998 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 1,524 and Germany with 1,188.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 365,321 deaths from 21,581,749 cases. At least 6,298,082 people have been declared recovered.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 200,498 deaths from 7,961,673 cases, India with 150,570 deaths from 10,413,417 cases, Mexico with 131,031 deaths from 1,493,569 cases, and the United Kingdom with 78,508 deaths from 2,889,419 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 172 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 141, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 128, Italy 128 and the Republic of North Macedonia 124.

Europe overall has 607,458 deaths from 28,274,525 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 523,073 deaths from 16,199,597 infections, and the United States and Canada 381,865 deaths from 22,214,812 cases.

Asia has reported 223,928 deaths from 14,197,294 cases, the Middle East 91,570 deaths from 4,154,963 cases, Africa 70,557 deaths from 2,952,125 cases, and Oceania 945 deaths from 31,256 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.

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© Agence France-Presse