Around 12,361,580 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories, global tallies revealed on Saturday.

The novel coronavirus has killed at least 556,140 people.

At least 6,593,400 are now considered recovered.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

The coronavirus outbreak, which is considered as one of the deadliest and most contagious, emerged in China late last year.

Two WHO experts have flown to China to investigate the COVID origins.

Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases.

The United States is the worst-hit country with 133,542 deaths from 3,144,472 cases. At least 969,111 people have been declared recovered.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Brazil with 69,184 deaths from 1,755,779 cases, the United Kingdom with 44,650 deaths from 288,133 cases, Italy with 34,938 deaths from 242,639 cases and Mexico with 33,526 deaths from 282,283 cases.

China — excluding Hong Kong and Macau — has to date declared 83,585 cases (4 new since Thursday), including 4,634 deaths and 78,609 recoveries.

Europe overall has 201,723 deaths from 2,803,100 cases, the United States and Canada 142,335 deaths from 3,251,493 infections, Latin America and the Caribbean 138,337 deaths from 3,186,561 cases, Asia 41,422 deaths from 1,658,293 cases, Middle East 19,555 deaths from 893,896 cases, Africa 12,633 deaths from 557,308 cases and Oceania 135 deaths from 10,929 cases.

There have been 5,112 new deaths logged since 1900 GMT on Thursday — Namibia notably announcing its first – and 224,319 new cases.

Belgium’s 84 deaths per 100,000 population is proportionately the highest ahead of 66 for the United Kingdom, 61 for Spain, 58 for Italy and 55 for Sweden.

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 tallie

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday reported 3,106,931 cases of new coronavirus, an increase of 59,260 cases from its previous count, and said that the number of deaths had risen by 799 to 132,855.

The CDC reported its tally of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19, caused by a new coronavirus, as of 4 pm ET on July 9 compared with its previous report a day earlier.

The CDC figures do not necessarily reflect cases reported by individual states.

Meanwhile, Brazil  registered 45,048 additional cases of the novel coronavirus over the last 24 hours and 1,214 new deaths, the health ministry said on Friday.

The nation has now registered 1,800,827 total confirmed cases and 70,398 deaths attributable to the virus./Stacy Ang with reports from AFP and Reuters