The novel coronavirus has killed at least 344,107 people since the outbreak first emerged in China last December, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP at 1900 GMT on Monday.

The drop in the total numbers of deaths is due to Spain's revision of its toll downwards by nearly 2,000.

At least 5,453,650 cases of coronavirus have been registered in 196 countries and territories. Of these, at least 2,133,900 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 symptomatic cases or the most serious ones.

The US is the worst-hit country with 97,948 deaths from 1,653,390 cases. At least 366,736 people have been declared recovered.

After the US, the hardest-hit countries are Britain with 36,914 deaths from 261,984 cases, Italy with 32,877 from 230,158 cases, France with 28,457 deaths and 182,942 cases and Spain at 26,834 deaths and 235,400 cases.

Spain revised its toll downwards by 1,918 on Monday after identifying deaths that had been counted twice and excluding others wrongly attributed to the virus.

China -- excluding Hong Kong and Macau -- has to date declared 4,634 deaths and 82,985 cases. It has 78,268 recovered cases.

Since the last tally at 1900 GMT on Sunday, Mozambique has announced its first death linked to the virus.

Europe overall has 172,575 deaths from 2,037,617 cases, the United States and Canada have 104,572 deaths from 1,739,067 infections, Latin America and the Caribbean 40,318 deaths from 749,247 cases, Asia 14,244 deaths from 454,748 cases, the Middle East 8,870 deaths from 351,099 cases, Africa 3,398 deaths from 113,402 cases, and Oceania 130 deaths from 8,476 cases.

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 tallies