Covid-19 has killed at least 4.7 million people worldwide

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 4,715,909 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Thursday.

At least 230,024,390 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 Wednesday, 9,802 new deaths and 515,197 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were the United States with 2,714, followed by Brazil with 876 and Russia with 820.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 681,185 deaths from 42,543,365 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 592,316 deaths from 21,283,567 cases, India with 446,050 deaths from 33,563,421 cases, Mexico with 273,391 deaths from 3,597,168 cases, and Russia with 201,445 deaths from 7,354,995 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 604 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina with 316, the Republic of North Macedonia with 313, Hungary with 312, Montenegro with 298, and Bulgaria with 291.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,478,016 deaths from 44,571,529 cases, Europe 1,295,187 deaths from 66,590,721 infections, and Asia 829,338 deaths from 53,202,700 cases.

The United States and Canada have reported 708,686 deaths from 44,130,365 cases, Africa 207,173 deaths from 8,198,199 cases, the Middle East 195,505 deaths from 13,167,368 cases, and Oceania 2,004 deaths from 163,511 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.