Global death toll from COVID-19 now at 2.43 million -AFP tally

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,430,693 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 109,857,920 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 67,422,400 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 organizations, as has happened in Russia, Spain and Britain. 

On Wednesday, 11,018 new deaths and 390,322 new cases were recorded worldwide. 

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 2,446 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 1,150 and Mexico with 1,075. 

The United States is the worst-affected country with 490,550 deaths from 27,826,891 cases. 

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 242,090 deaths from 9,978,747 cases, Mexico with 177,061 deaths from 2,013,563 cases, India with 156,014 deaths from 10,950,201 cases, and Britain with 118,933 deaths from 4,071,185 cases. 

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 188 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 180, Britain 175, Czech Republic 175 and Italy 156. 

Europe overall has 817,568 deaths from 36,006,514 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 648,812 deaths from 20,402,142 infections, and the United States and Canada 511,970 deaths from 28,660,242 cases. 

Asia has reported 249,928 deaths from 15,785,961 cases, the Middle East 101,585 deaths from 5,183,827 cases, Africa 99,883 deaths from 3,787,300 cases, and Oceania 947 deaths from 31,941 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. -Agence France-Presse