John Nkengasong, who was speaking during an online meeting with the media from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, underlined "the achievement" that the African Union has achieved by bringing the number of countries able to test covid-19 from two to 43 in two weeks, currently standing at 48.
"If we had started in January, all countries would already have this diagnostic capability," he said.
The Director of Africa CDC stressed that thanks to the existence of these diagnostic tests, it is now possible to quantify the number of infected people on the continent.
He said Africa currently has 11,400 cases in 52 countries, with 572 dead and 1,313 recovered.
John Nkengasong told reporters that the continent is currently competing with "the developed world" for access to these diagnoses and also for protective material such as masks and costumes.
He left a message: "The enemy is the virus and a dangerous virus. We cannot politicise this situation, because it would be devastating for us".
"The enemy is the virus and not organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) or the African Union", he warned.
Virologist by profession, John Nkengasong assumed he never imagined he would live to see such a devastating situation as the covid-19 pandemic.
"When we study virology, we study these cases in books, like the situation in 1918," he said, referring to the "Spanish flu" that between 1918 and 1920 infected 500 million people.
The African countries with the most covid-19 infections today are South Africa (1,800), Algeria (1,500), Egypt (1,500), Morocco (1,200) and Cameroon (650).
In at least ten other countries, the number of confirmed cases is in the hundreds.
All Portuguese-speaking African countries report cases of the disease, with Guinea-Bissau being the most affected, accounting for 33 people with infections by the new coronavirus.
Angola has 19 confirmed cases of covid-19, accounting for two deaths.
Mozambique has 10 reported cases of new coronavirus infection and Cape Verde has a total of seven cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic, including one dead.
Sao Tome and Principe, the last Portuguese-speaking African country to detect cases of the disease in its territory, has four confirmed cases.
In Equatorial Guinea, which is part of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, 16 positive cases of infection with the new coronavirus have been confirmed.
The new coronavirus, responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, has already infected more than 1.5 million people worldwide, of whom more than 87,000 have died.
Of the cases of infection, some 280,000 are considered cured.
