According to the African Union Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the total number of those infected in the organization's 55 member states is 4,222,260 and the number of those recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours is 8898, for a total of 3,771,866 since the start of the pandemic.
Southern Africa remains the worst affected region, with 1,908,921 people infected and 60,079 deaths associated with the disease on Thursday. Within this region, South Africa, the country worst hit by covid-19 on the continent, registers 1,548,157 cases and 52,846 deaths.
North Africa is the second hardest hit by the pandemic, with 1,246,273 infected and 35,843 deaths.
East Africa counts 500,391 infections and 9049 deaths, while in West Africa the number of infections is 433,686 and the number of deaths is 5696. Central Africa has 132,989 cases and 2153 deaths.
Egypt, which is the second African country with the most deaths after South Africa, has 11,995 deaths and 202,131 infected, followed by Morocco with 8818 deaths and 496,097 cases.
Among the most affected countries are also Tunisia, with 8812 deaths and 254,018 cases, Algeria, with 3093 deaths and 117,100 infected, and Ethiopia, with 2865 deaths and 206,589 infections.
Regarding the Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique records 775 deaths and 67,579 cases, followed by Angola (537 deaths and 22,311 cases of infection), Cape Verde (168 deaths and 17,470 cases), Equatorial Guinea (102 deaths and 6914 cases), Guinea-Bissau (63 deaths and 3650 cases) and São Tomé and Príncipe (34 deaths and 2221 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 2,816,908 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 128.8 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.
