People sit outside for food service during the 97th annual Laconia Bike Week in Laconia, New Hampshire, the US on Saturday amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo: AFP

The global death toll from the novel coronavirus has surpassed 800,000, according to an AFP count on Saturday, with numerous countries ramping up restrictions in an effort to battle an eruption of new cases.

Western Europe, particularly Spain, Italy, Germany and France, has been hit with infection levels not seen in many months, sparking fears of a fully fledged second wave.

And in Asia, South Korea became the latest country to announce it would boost restrictions to try to stem a new outbreak, after largely bringing the virus under control.

Across the world, the number of deaths due to COVID-19 has doubled to just over 800,000 since June 6, with 100,000 fatalities in the last 17 days alone, while more than 23 million cases have been reported. 

Latin America is the region most affected, while more than half of the global fatalities have been reported in the hardest-hit US, Brazil, Mexico and India.

The surging numbers come after the UN health agency said Friday that the world should be able to rein in the pandemic in less than two years.

The World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sought to draw favorable comparisons with the flu pandemic of 1918 which cost 50 million people's lives.

"We have a disadvantage of globalization, closeness, connectedness, but an advantage of better technology, so we hope to finish this pandemic before less than two years," he said in a statement.

The WHO also recommended children over 12 years old now wear masks in the same situations as adults.

With no usable vaccine yet available, the most prominent tool governments have is to confine their populations or enforce social distancing.

AFP