The United States overtook Italy on Saturday to become the country with the largest death toll in the coronavirus pandemic, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.

The outbreak has now claimed the lives of at least 18,860, people in the US, which also leads the world in the number of confirmed infections with 503,594, by the Baltimore-based school's count.

Italy has registered 18,849 deaths according to an AFP tally based on official counts, but with a population of around 60 million it is less than a fifth the size of the US.