Health officials have recorded more than 20 million cases of the coronavirus across Europe, according to an AFP tally based on official sources at 1315 GMT on Tuesday.

Europe is the worst affected region for the disease, which was first detected on the continent at the beginning of the year.

Almost 40 percent of the new cases detected over the last seven days worldwide were in Europe, but the rate of infection appears to be stabilising, with a two percent drop in cases compared with the previous week.

Behind Europe, the United States and Canada has 15.4 million cases and Latin America 13.6 million. To date, there have been 67 million cases recorded across the world since the outbreak began at the end of 2019.