Covid-19 has killed at least 4.5 million people worldwide

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 4,593,164 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 222,467,600 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, 10,074 new deaths and 660,070 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were United States with 2,084 new deaths, followed by Mexico with 879 and Russia with 794.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 652,675 deaths from 40,456,816 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 584,421 deaths from 20,928,008 cases, India with 441,749 deaths from 33,139,981 cases, Mexico with 265,420 deaths from 3,465,171 cases, and Peru with 198,595 deaths from 2,157,536 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 602 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 311, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 303, Republic of North Macedonia with 295, Czech Republic with 284 and Montenegro with 283.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,454,846 deaths from 43,746,004 cases, Europe 1,266,744 deaths from 64,457,948 infections, and Asia 801,191 deaths from 51,478,202 cases.

The United States And Canada has reported 679,761 deaths from 41,983,730 cases, Africa 201,029 deaths from 7,980,109 cases, Middle East 187,786 deaths from 12,685,376 cases, and Oceania 1,807 deaths from 136,231 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.