A nurse anesthetist disinfects materials of ambulances which carried six coronavirus patients at the Brest hospital, evacuated by air from the French eastern city of Mulhouse, in Brest, western France, on March 24. As of 6pm Saturday, France has 26,230 deaths and 174,791 cases. AFP/VNA Photo

PARIS The novel coronavirus has killed at least 274,617 people since the outbreak first emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1100 GMT on Saturday.

More than 3,946,130 cases were registered in 195 countries and territories.

Of these, at least 1,293,700 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.

Many countries are testing only the most serious cases.

The US has the highest number of total deaths with 77,180 out of 1,283,929 cases. At least 198,993 have been declared recovered.

Britain now has the second highest toll with 31,241 deaths from 211,364 cases.

It is followed by Italy with 30,201 deaths and 217,185 cases, Spain with 26,478 fatalities and 223,578 infections and France with 26,230 deaths and 174,791 cases.

China -- excluding Hong Kong and Macau -- has to date declared 4,633 deaths and 82,887 cases. It has 78,046 recovered cases.

Europe has a total of 154,144 deaths from 1,696,696 cases, the United States and Canada have 81,858 deaths and 1,350,363 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean have 18,651 deaths and 339,771 cases, Asia has 10,238 deaths and 279,180 cases, the Middle East has 7,471 deaths and 214,173 cases, Africa has 2,130 deaths from 57,689 cases, and Oceania 125 deaths from 8,261 cases.

Please note that due to corrections by national authorities or late publication of data, the figures updated over the past 24-hour period may not correspond exactly to the previous day's tallies. AFP