PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 3,419,488 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 164,805,270 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 Wednesday, 13,774 new deaths and 646,174 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 3,874 new deaths, followed by Brazil with 2,641 and United States with 648.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 587,874 deaths from 33,026,741 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 441,691 deaths from 15,812,055 cases, India with 287,122 deaths from 25,772,440 cases, Mexico with 220,850 deaths from 2,387,512 cases, and Britain with 127,694 deaths from 4,452,527 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Hungary with 304 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Czech Republic with 280, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 277, Republic of North Macedonia 252 and Bulgaria 250.

Europe overall has 1,116,560 deaths from 52,537,114 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean 993,635 deaths from 31,281,754 infections, and the United States and Canada 612,920 deaths from 34,367,074 cases.

Asia has reported 428,996 deaths from 33,523,606 cases, the Middle East 139,052 deaths from 8,327,964 cases, Africa 127,246 deaths from 4,720,903 cases, and Oceania 1,079 deaths from 46,856 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.