GENEVA, June 18. /TASS/. Nearly 120,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection were registered worldwide on June 17, with the overall number of such cases exceeding 8.06 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Thursday.

As of 11:00 Moscow time on June 17, as many as 8,061,550 novel coronavirus cases and 440,290 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 119,759 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 5,494.

The WHO statistics is based on officially confirmed data from the countries.

South and North America accounts for the majority of confirmed coronavirus cases - 3,899,859. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases grew by 58,250 and the number of deaths - by 1,981 and reached 205,555.

The number confirmed COVID-2019 cases in Europe amounts to 2,452,247 and the number of fatalities is 189,582. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases grew by 18,063 and the number of deaths - by 803.

The East Mediterranean region has 817,458 cases and 18,057 fatalities as of June 17. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases grew by 20,699 and the number of deaths - by 499.

The biggest number of coronavirus cases was reported from the United States (2,098,106), Brazil (888,271), Russia (553,301), India (354,065), the United Kingdom (298,140), Spain (244,328), Italy (237,500), Peru (232,992), Iran (192,439), and Germany (187,184).

A pneumonia outbreak caused by the COVID-19 virus (previously known as 2019-nCoV) was reported in China’s city of Wuhan, a large trade and industrial center with a population of 12 million, in late December 2019. Since then, cases of the new coronavirus have been reported from nearly all parts of the world. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.