GENEVA, April 23. /TASS/. More than 83,000 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus were registered worldwide on April 22, exceeding the previous day's statistics by more than 9,000 cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Wednesday.

As of 11:00 Moscow time on April 22, as many as 2,471,136 novel coronavirus cases and 169,006 coronavirus-associated deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 73,920 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 6,058.

Europe accounts for the majority of confirmed cases and fatalities - 1,219,486 and 109,952 respectively. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases grew by 32,302 and the number of deaths - by 3,618.

The number confirmed COVID-2019 cases in South and North America reached 925,291 and the number of deaths stands at 44,775. In the past 24 hours, the number of cases grew by 32,172 and the number of deaths - by 2,089.

The Eastern Mediterranean region comes third, with 139,349 cases and 6,326 fatalities.

The biggest number of coronavirus cases were reported from the United States (776,907), Spain (204,178), Italy (183,957), Germany (145,694), the United Kingdom (129,048), France (116,151), Turkey (95,591), Iran (84,802), China (84,287) and Russia (57,999). In the past day, Iran overtook China to become the world’s eighth hardest-hit country. China, once the world’s hardest hit-country and the starting point of the outbreak, is now ranked ninth.

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.

The WHO statistics is based only on official information about cases and deaths, provided by national governments.