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 4,476,121 and those recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours is 13,585, for a total of 4,016,834 since the start of the pandemic.
Southern Africa remains the worst affected region, recording 1,951,294 infected and 61,606 deaths associated with being infected with the disease. Within this region, South Africa, the country hardest hit by covid-19 on the continent, records 1,571,348 cases and 53,995 deaths.
North Africa is the second hardest hit area, with 1,335,188 infected and 38,556 fatalities.
East Africa accounts for 584,307 infections and 10,739 deaths, while in West Africa the number of infections is 453,184 and the number of deaths is 5971. In Central Africa there are 152,148 cases of infection and 2417 deaths.
Egypt, which is the second African country with the most deaths after South Africa, has 12,914 deaths and 219,774 infected, followed by Tunisia, which this Friday surpassed 10,000 deaths (10,063) and has 294,138 cases of infection. Morocco counts 507,938 cases of infection and 8976 deaths associated with covid-19.
Also among the most affected countries are Ethiopia, with 3496 deaths and 247,969 infections, and Algeria, with 3181 deaths and 120,393 infected.
Regarding the Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique records 805 deaths and 69,523 cases, followed by Angola (572 deaths and 25,051 cases of infection), Cape Verde (199 deaths and 21,500 cases), Equatorial Guinea (107 deaths and 7559 cases), Guinea-Bissau (66 deaths and 3721 cases) and Sao Tome and Principe (35 deaths and 2292 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 3,073,969 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 144.6 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.
