Over 1.5 million coronavirus deaths have been recorded worldwide from nearly 65 million cases, according to an AFP tally based on official statistics.

There have been 1,500,038 fatalities from 64,774,705 cases since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in China in December.

The worst affected region is Latin America and the Caribbean with 452,263 deaths, followed by Europe (430,060) and the United States and Canada (286,946).

Since late November, there have been more than 10,000 virus deaths globally per day on average, the highest toll rate since the pandemic began.