Global COVID-19 death toll now more than 3.94M

PARIS, France - The novel coronavirus has killed at least 3,940,888 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Wednesday.

At least 181,755,350 cases of coronavirus have been registered. The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

The figures are based on daily reports provided by health authorities in each country.

They exclude revisions made by other statistical organisations, which show that the number of deaths is much higher.

The World Health Organization estimates that the pandemic's overall toll could be two to three times higher than official records, due to the excess mortality that is directly and indirectly linked to Covid-19.

A large number of the less severe or asymptomatic cases also remain undetected, despite intensified testing in many countries.

On Tuesday, 8,285 new deaths and 378,424 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were Brazil with 1,893 new deaths, followed by India with 817 and Russia with 669.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 604,467 deaths from 33,651,924 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 515,985 deaths from 18,513,305 cases, India with 398,454 deaths from 30,362,848 cases, Mexico with 232,803 deaths from 2,513,164 cases, and Peru with 192,163 deaths from 2,049,567 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 583 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 310, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 295, the Czech Republic with 283, and Republic of North Macedonia with 263.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,271,762 deaths from 37,352,266 cases, Europe 1,168,224 deaths from 54,455,316 infections, and the United States and Canada 630,734 deaths from 35,066,450 cases.

Asia has reported 576,579 deaths from 40,061,921 cases, the Middle East 150,263 deaths from 9,296,477 cases, Africa 142,196 deaths from 5,468,704 cases, and Oceania 1,130 deaths from 54,222 cases.

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