Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Over 585,000 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus have been recorded globally in the past day, pushing a total number of infections to 72.19 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its daily bulletin on Wednesday.

According to the WHO updates, the coronavirus-related deaths increased by over 11,400 to exceed 1.63 million, TASS reported.

As of 19.51 Moscow time on 16 December, as many as 72,196,732 coronavirus cases and 1,630,521 coronavirus-related deaths were registered across the globe. The number of confirmed cases grew by 585,455 in the past 24 hours and the number of fatalities increased by 11,463.

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

South and North America account for more than 45% of single-day COVID-19 cases submitted to the WHO in the past 24 hours (266,581). Europe goes second (237,526 cases) followed by South East Asia (37,151).

Most COVID-19 cases are recorded in the United States (16,245,376), followed by India (9,932,547), Brazil (6,927,145), Russia (2,734,454), France (2,350,207), the UK (1,888,120), Italy (1,870,576), Spain (1,762,212), Argentina (1,503,222), Colombia (1,434,516), Germany (1,379,238) and Mexico (1,255,974).