AFRICA’S COVID-19 TOLL HITS 36,000 IN 24HRS, REPORTS WHO

Thu 30 April 2020:

The number of coronavirus infections in Africa has reached 36,460, with 1,850 new infections recorded in the last 24 hours, while 1,581 people died from the virus-related causes across the continent, the World Health Organization (WHO) Africa branch said Thursday.

South Africa accounts for the biggest number of infections (5,350) and 103 deaths. Algeria, meanwhile, has the biggest coronavirus death toll (444) and 3,848 infections. Egypt reported 380 fatalities and 5,268 cases, while Morocco identified 4,289 cases and 167 deaths, and Tunisia registered 975 cases and 40 fatalities.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Cameroon is ranked second after South Africa with 1,806 coronavirus infections and 59 fatalities, followed by Ghana (1,671 and 16), Nigeria (1,532 and 44), Guinea (1,351 and 7) and Ivory Coast (1,164 and 14).

In recent coronavirus developments in Africa, a major US military base in Djibouti – Camp Lemonnier – has locked down after a second infection case was identified among the base personnel. Djibouti currently has 1,077 infections and two deaths.

In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus – named COVID-19 by the WHO – have been reported in every corner of the globe.

On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 3,200,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 228,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 1,000,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.