Gambia (1), Zambia (2) Djibouti (1) were the countries that announced the existence of the first infections, on the same day that Burkina Faso registered five new cases and the first death caused by the disease.
According to the Worldometers website on the Covid-19 pandemic, which compiles information in almost real time from the World Health Organization (WHO), official country sources and the media, this Wednesday nearly 80 new cases were reported in 14 African countries.
South Africa recorded 31 new cases and now counts 116, making it the country with the most cases in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Most of the cases are of people recently returned to the country, but local contamination is growing, with 14 out of 31 new patients being infected locally.
The government has banned cruise ships from docking in the country's ports, at a time when more than 1700 people have been held since Sunday on a ship off the South African coast, according to local media.
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, with 200 million inhabitants, has announced five new cases, now totaling eight.
The authorities suspended the entry of passengers from 13 high-risk countries: China, the United States of America, Italy, Iran, South Korea, Spain, Japan, France, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
New cases were also recorded this Wednesday in Equatorial Guinea (2), Algeria (11), Tunisia (2), Sudan (1), Kenya (3), Morocco (5), Ivory Coast (2), Senegal ( 4), Democratic Republic of Congo (4), Tanzania (2) and Rwanda (1).
Somalia, which announced its first case this week, closed schools and universities for two weeks and discouraged crowds.
In Uganda, although no cases have yet been recorded, religious ceremonies and gatherings with more than 10 people have been suspended.
The Portuguese-speaking countries - Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe - remain without confirmed cases.
The accounts of international news agencies point to the existence of at least 600 cases and 16 deaths in 33 of the continent's 55 countries and territories, while data from the African Union's Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) records more than 500 contagions. in 31 countries.
The CDC has scheduled its fourth 'briefing' since Thursday since the pandemic was declared, while health experts from 20 African countries are participating in conferences with doctors in China in an attempt to collect data to stop the spread of the virus .
