According to the African Union Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the number of infected in the organization's 55 member states is 3,994,030 and the number recovered in the last 24 hours is 12,012, for a total of 3,576,363 since the start of the pandemic.
Southern Africa remains the worst affected region, registering 1,861,956 infected and 57,772 dead this Thursday. Within this region, South Africa, the country worst hit by covid-19 on the continent, registers 1,524,174 cases and 51,015 deaths.
North Africa is the second hardest hit by the pandemic, with 1,188,629 infected and 33,932 deaths.
East Africa counts 426,257 infections and 7875 deaths, while in West Africa the number of infections is 406,034 and the number of deaths is 5267. Central Africa has 111,154 cases and 1866 deaths.
Egypt, which is the second African country with the most deaths after South Africa, has 11,128 deaths and 188,629 infected, followed by Morocco with 8705 deaths and 487,286 cases.
Among the most affected countries are also Tunisia, with 8292 deaths and 239,368 cases, Algeria, with 3028 deaths and 114,589 infected, and Ethiopia, with 2466 deaths and 169,878 infections.
Regarding the Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique records 707 deaths and 63,174 cases, followed by Angola (516 deaths and 21,161 cases of infection), Cape Verde (155 deaths and 15,892 cases), Equatorial Guinea (98 deaths and 6456 cases), Guinea-Bissau (51 deaths and 3327 cases) and São Tomé and Príncipe (32 deaths and 2010 cases).
The first case of covid-19 in Africa appeared in Egypt on February 14, 2020, and Nigeria was the first sub-Saharan African country to record cases of infection on February 28.
The covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 2,621,295 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 117.9 million cases of infection, according to an assessment by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
