By Haruna Gimba
A tally from official sources complied by the AFP, have shown that the novel coronavirus has killed at least 2,466,453 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019.
At least 111,331,990 cases of coronavirus have been registered. Of these, at least 68,323,000 are now considered recovered.
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 Sunday, 5,878 new deaths and 306,582 new cases were recorded worldwide.
Based on the latest reports, the countries with the highest figures for new deaths were the United States with 1,311 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 527 and Russia with 337.
The United States remains the worst-affected country with 498,901 deaths from 28,134,275 cases.
After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 246,504 deaths from 10,168,174 cases, Mexico with 180,107 deaths from 2,041,380 cases, India with 156,385 deaths from 11,005,850 cases, and the United Kingdom with 120,580 deaths from 4,115,509 cases.
The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Belgium with 189 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Slovenia with 182, the Czech Republic 181, the United Kingdom 178 and Italy 158.
Europe overall has 829,710 deaths from 36,546,417 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 659,523 deaths from 20,748,236 infections, and the United States and Canada 520,560 deaths from 28,979,364 cases.
Asia has reported 251,882 deaths from 15,910,075 cases, the Middle East 102,484 deaths from 5,286,266 cases, Africa 101,347 deaths from 3,829,663 cases, and Oceania 947 deaths from 31,975 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.
