AFP / Paris, France
The new coronavirus pandemic has caused at least 4,992,831 deaths in the world since the office of the World Health Organization (WHO) in China reported the appearance of the disease in December 2019, according to a balance established by AFP this Sunday from official sources.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 246,316,520 people have contracted the disease. The vast majority of patients recover, but a still bad part remained with symptoms for weeks or even months.
The figures are based on the reports communicated daily by the health authorities of each country and exclude the corrections made a posteriori by the different statistical agencies that conclude that the number of deaths is much more important.
The WHO even estimates that if the excess mortality linked to the covid, direct and indirect, is taken into account, the balance of the pandemic could be two to three times higher than that officially registered.
A significant part of less severe or asymptomatic cases remains undetected despite the intensification of testing in many countries.
On Saturday, 6,238 new deaths and 399,027 infections were registered in the world.
The countries that registered the most deaths according to the latest official balances are Russia with 1,158 cases, India with 446 and Romania with 413.
Countries with the most deaths
The number of deaths in the United States amounts to 745,670 with 45,953,780 infections. After the United States, the countries with the most fatalities are Brazil, with 607,694 deaths and 21,804,094 cases; India, with 458,186 deaths (34,273,300 cases); Mexico, with 288,276 deaths (3,805,765 cases); and Russia, with 238,538 deaths (8,513,790 cases).
Among the hardest hit countries, Peru has the highest mortality rate, with 607 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Bosnia (350), Bulgaria (344), North Macedonia (342), Montenegro (334) and Hungary (318 ).
On Sunday at 11:00 GMT and since the beginning of the epidemic, Latin America and the Caribbean added 1,520,594 deaths (45,910,865 infections), Europe 1,397,748 (74,243,239), Asia 870,642 (55,821,205), United States United States and Canada 774,622 (47,665,908), Africa 218,102 (8,498,740), Middle East 208,332 (13,919,855) and Oceania 2,791 (256,714).
This balance was made using data from national authorities collected by AFP offices and with information from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Due to corrections or late release of the data, the increase in the 24-hour published figures cannot exactly match the previous day’s numbers.