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 4,610,171 and those recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours is 10,073, rising to 4,157,842 since the start of the pandemic.
Southern Africa remains the worst affected region, with 1,982,479 people infected and 62,442 deaths associated with being infected with the disease. Within this region, South Africa, the country hardest hit by covid-19 on the continent, registers 1,590,370 cases and 54,620 deaths.
North Africa is the second hardest hit area, with 1,385,990 infected and 40,834 fatalities.
East Africa accounts for 614,353 infections and 11,636 deaths, while in West Africa the number of infections is 462,456 and the number of deaths 6107. In Central Africa, there are 164,893 cases of infection and 2619 deaths recorded.
Egypt, which is the second African country with the most deaths after South Africa, records 13,714 deaths and 234,015 infected, followed by Tunisia with 11,208 deaths and 317,010 cases of infection. Morocco accounts for 513,016 cases of infection and 9049 deaths associated with covid-19.
Also among the most affected countries are Ethiopia, with 3822 deaths and 260,802 infections, and Algeria, with 3307 deaths and 123,473 infected.
Regarding the Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique records 819 deaths and 70,108 cases, followed by Angola (622 deaths and 27,921 cases of infection), Cape Verde (230 deaths and 25,526 cases), Equatorial Guinea (112 deaths and 7694 cases), Guinea-Bissau (67 deaths and 3738 cases) and São Tomé and Príncipe (35 deaths and 2314 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 3,258,595 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 155.9 million cases of infection, according to an assessment by French news agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
