PARIS: The novel coronavirus has killed at least 3,714,923 people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1000 GMT on Saturday.

At least 172,499,930 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 Friday, 9,916 new deaths and 427,592 new cases were recorded worldwide.

Based on latest reports, the countries with the most new deaths were India with 3,380, followed by Brazil with 1,454 and the United States with 605.

The United States is the worst-affected country with 597,001 deaths from 33,346,365 cases.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 470,842 deaths from 16,841,408 cases, India with 344,082 deaths from 28,694,879 cases, Mexico with 228,568 deaths from 2,429,631 cases, and Peru with 185,813 deaths from 1,976,166 cases.

The country with the highest number of deaths compared to its population is Peru with 564 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Hungary with 309, Bosnia-Herzegovina with 286, Czech Republic with 282, and Republic of North Macedonia with 261.

Latin America and the Caribbean overall has 1,174,349 deaths from 33,719,987 cases, Europe 1,141,248 deaths from 53,178,996 infections, and the United States and Canada 622,672 deaths from 34,735,355 cases.

Asia has reported 499,345 deaths from 37,202,590 cases, the Middle East 144,420 deaths from 8,715,041 cases, Africa 131,785 deaths from 4,898,623 cases, and Oceania 1,104 deaths from 49,338 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.