"The curve continues to rise. Between 21 and 27 May, there were 30 thousand new cases registered compared to the previous week, when we had a record of 21,700 new cases. It is an increase of 1.4 times. We have an average of 4200 new cases. daily cases on the continent, "said John Nkengasong.
The Africa CDC director, who was speaking at the weekly press conference from the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, noted that part of this growth is justified by the increased number of tests for the new coronavirus carried out by countries.
Almost a third of new cases were reported in Southern Africa (30 percent), followed by North Africa (24 percent), West Africa (16 percent), Central Africa (15 percent) and East Africa (13 percent). percent).
Globally, the African continent records 124,482 accumulated cases of infections with the new coronavirus and 3,696 deaths, which represents a fatality rate of 3 percent.
John Nkengasong underlined the progress made in carrying out tests on the covid-19, pointing out that the continent went from less than 400 thousand tests, in the beginning of April, to almost 2 million today.
"Since April, we have significantly increased the number of tests. There are countries that today are doing between 5,000 and 7,000 tests per day. By the end of this week, Africa CDC will have distributed 2.5 million tests to member states" , said.
Despite the progress, the Africa CDC director acknowledged that the continent is still far from the ideal level of testing.
"With a continent of 1.2 billion people, our goal is to test 1 percent of the population, that is, we have to do 12 million tests. We are close to 2 million, we still have a gap of 10 million", pointed.
