The worldwide death toll from the novel coronavirus pandemic rose to 137,500 on Thursday, according to a tally compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT from official sources.
More than 2,083,820 declared cases have been registered in193 countries and territories since the epidemic first emerged in China inDecember.
Of these cases, at least 450,500 are now consideredrecovered. The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authoritiesand information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect onlya fraction of the actual number of infections. Many countries are testing onlythe most serious cases.
Italy is the next most-affected country with 21,645 deathsfrom 165,155 infections.
It is followed by Spain with 19,130 fatalities from 182,816confirmed infections, France with 17,167 deaths and 147,863 infections andBritain with 12,868 deaths from 98,476 cases. China — excluding Hong Kong andMacau — has to date declared 3,342 deaths and 82,341 cases with 77,892recoveries.Europe has listed 1,047,303 cases and 90,181deaths to date, the US and Canada together have 667,870 cases with 32,039deaths, Asia 151,423 cases with 5,369 deaths, the Middle East 112,377 caseswith 5.253 deaths, Latin America and the Caribbean 79,862 cases with 3,669deaths, Africa 17,293 cases with 910 deaths and Oceania 7,694 cases with 79deaths.