12950 deaths on Friday inch Covid-19 death toll closer to 3,5 million

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 3,359,726 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Saturday.

At least 161,795,290 cases of coronavirus have been registered. The vast majority have recovered, though some have continued to experience symptoms weeks or even months later.

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 Friday, 12,950 new deaths and 728,160 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 3,890 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 2,211 and the United States with 758.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 585,232 deaths from 32,895,292 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 432,628 deaths from 15,519,525 cases, India with 266,207 deaths from 24,372,907 cases, Mexico with 220,159 deaths from 2,377,995 cases, and the United Kingdom with 127,668 deaths from 4,446,824 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Hungary with 301 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina with 274, the Republic of North Macedonia 249 and Montenegro 248.

Europe overall has 1,106,294 deaths from 52,103,195 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 975,296 deaths from 30,630,875 infections, and the United States and Canada 610,092 deaths from 34,211,534 cases.

Asia has reported 403,842 deaths from 31,905,113 cases, the Middle East 137,291 deaths from 8,220,606 cases, Africa 125,835 deaths from 4,677,822 cases, and Oceania 1,076 deaths from 46,151 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.