More than 817,000 new cases of novel coronavirus have been confirmed globally in the past 24 hours, which pushed a total number of infections to 156.49 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Saturday.

Axar.az reports that according to the WHO updates, the coronavirus-related deaths increased by over 13,400 to surpass 3.26 million.

As of 17.00 Moscow time on May 8, as many as 156,496,592 coronavirus cases and 3,264,143 coronavirus-related deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 817,345 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 13,426.

The WHO statistics are based on the officially confirmed data provided by countries.

South East Asia, where India is included by the WHO, accounts for more than half of new COVID-19 cases submitted to the WHO in the past 24 hours (423,364 cases). South and North America (205,327) goes second followed by Europe (124,715 cases).

Most COVID-19 cases are recorded in the United States (32,257,416), followed by India (21,892,676), Brazil (15,003,563), France (5,655,548), Turkey (4,998,089), Russia (4,871,843), the UK (4,431,047), Italy (4,092,747), Spain (3,559,222), Germany (3,507,673), Argentina (3,095,582) and Colombia (2,951,101).

The United States is the country with the highest rate of COVID-19 deaths (574,518), followed by Brazil (416,949), India (238,270), Mexico (218,173), the UK (127,598), Italy (122,470), Russia (112,992), France (105,339), Germany (84,648), Spain (78,726), Colombia (76,414) and Iran (74,241).