GENEVA, April 18. /TASS/. More than 83,000 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus were registered worldwide in the past 24 hours, or by nearly 6,000 cases more than on the previous day, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Friday.

As of 11:00 Moscow time on April 17, as many as 2,074,579 novel coronavirus cases and 139,378 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 82,967 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 8,493.

Europe accounts for the majority of confirmed cases and fatalities - 1,050,871 and 93,480, respectively. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases there grew by 37,778 and the number of deaths - by 4,163.

The number confirmed COVID-2019 cases in South and North America reached 743,607 and the number of deaths stands at 33,028. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases grew by 36,486 and the number of deaths - by 2,783.

The Asia Pacific region, which includes China, South Korea and Japan, has 127,595 cases and 5,558 fatalities as of April 17.

The biggest number of coronavirus cases were reported from the United States (632,781), Spain (182,816), Italy (168,941), Germany (133,830), France (107,778), the United Kingdom (103,093), China (84,149), Iran (77,995), Turkey (74,193), and Belgium (34,809).

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.