Wuhan, the COVID-19 epicentre, admitted missteps in tallying its death toll, abruptly raising the city's count by 50 percent -- following growing world doubts about Chinese transparency over the outbreak.

The WHO said Wuhan had been overwhelmed by the virus, which emerged in the city in December, and the authorities had been too swamped to ensure every death and infection was properly recorded.

Authorities in Wuhan initially tried to cover up the outbreak, punishing doctors who had raised the alarm online, and there have been questions about the government's recording of infections as it repeatedly changed its counting criteria at the peak of the crisis.

Read more China denies coronavirus cover-up as Wuhan revises death count up by 50 per cent

"This is something that is a challenge in an ongoing outbreak: to identify all of your cases and all of your deaths," Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, told a virtual press conference in Geneva.

"I would anticipate that many countries are going to be in a similar situation where they will have to go back and review records and look to see: did we capture all of them?"

More than 150,000 people have now died around the world from the coronavirus pandemic, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

YFC / Costfoto/Sipa USA

A total of 150,142 deaths were recorded by 1900 GMT on Friday, with almost two-thirds, or 96,721, in Europe.

The United States has the highest single toll, with 34,575 deaths, the data showed.

Kerkhove said the Wuhan authorities had now reviewed their databases and cross-checked for discrepancies.

Wuhan added 1,290 deaths to its toll, raising the total to 3,869, and added a further 325 cases, bringing the number of infections to 50,333.

Van Kerkhove said that because Wuhan's healthcare system was swamped, some patients died at home; others were in makeshift facilities; and that medics, focused on treating patients, therefore did not do the paperwork on time.

Michael Ryan, the WHO's emergencies director, added: "All countries will face this".

But he urged nations to produce precise data as early as possible, "because that keeps us on top of what the impact is, and allows us to project forward in a much more accurate way."

Read more Coronavirus measures are impacting the rescue of Australia's injured koalas

Africa hope

More than two million people have been infected with COVID-19, while, according to an AFP tally, more than 145,000 have lost their lives.

Most of the cases and deaths reported so far have been in Europe and the United States.

But WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned of a "worrying trend" emerging in Africa.

At the WHO's last daily count, there had been 11,843 confirmed cases and 550 deaths on the continent.

"In the past week there has been a 51 percent increase in the number of reported cases in my own continent, Africa, and a 60 percent increase in the number of reported deaths," the former Ethiopian health minister said.

But his colleagues said the situation was not beyond control on the continent, given Africa's long experience of having to battle fatal disease outbreaks.

"We don't believe, at this point, the disease has passed the capacity to be contained," said Ryan.