By Haruna Gimba with agency report
The novel coronavirus has killed at least 4,423,173 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Sunday.
At least 211,307,660 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 (WHO) 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 Saturday, 8,835 new deaths and 563,387 new cases were recorded worldwide.
Based on the latest reports, the countries with the highest figures for new deaths were Indonesia with 1,030, followed by Mexico with 847 and Russia with 762.
The United States is the worst-affected country with 628,303 deaths from 37,673,305 cases.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 574,209 deaths from 20,556,487 cases, India with 434,367 deaths from 32,424,234 cases, Mexico with 252,927 deaths from 3,217,415 cases, and Peru with 197,818 deaths from 2,141,235 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 600 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 311, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 296, the Czech Republic with 284, North Macedonia with 271 and Brazil with 270.
Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,420,897 deaths from 42,624,954 cases, Europe 1,232,372 deaths from 61,679,665 infections, and Asia 750,557 deaths from 48,552,188 cases.
The United States and Canada has reported 655,093 deaths from 39,139,890 cases, Africa 188,674 deaths from 7,507,205 cases, the Middle East 173,951 deaths from 11,696,869 cases, and Oceania 1,629 deaths from 106,894 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.
