According to the African Union Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the total number of cases on the continent is 5,108,888 and the number of recovered cases is 4,558,432, up 9777 in the last 24 hours.
Southern Africa remains the most affected region of the continent, with 2,237,986 cases and 67,177 deaths associated with covid-19. This region is home to the country worst hit by the pandemic, South Africa, which accounts for 1,774,312 cases and 58,223 deaths, more than the entire second worst affected African region.
North Africa, which succeeds Southern Africa in the covid-19 figures, has reached 1,519,584 infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and 46,085 deaths associated with the disease as of Thursday.
East Africa counts 686,579 infections and 13,493 deaths, and the West Africa region records 479,302 cases of infection and 6353 deaths. Central Africa has the fewest cases of infection and deaths, 185,437 and 2922 respectively.
Egypt, which is the second African country with the most deaths after South Africa, records 15,723 deaths and 275,010 infected, followed by Tunisia, with 13,721 deaths and 374,312 cases, and Morocco, which accounts for the second highest number of infections in the entire continent, 524,975 cases, but fewer deaths than the previous two countries, 9221 deaths associated with the disease.
Among the most affected countries are also Ethiopia, with 4260 deaths and 274,601 infections, and Algeria, with 3729 deaths and 134,458 infected.
Regarding the Portuguese-speaking countries, Angola once again overtook Mozambique in the number of deaths associated with the disease, a relative position in which it had not been since early February last.
Angola now counts 847 deaths associated with the disease and 37,094 infected accumulated since the beginning of the pandemic. Mozambique registers this Thursday 844 deaths and a total of 71,764 cumulative infected cases.
Among the remaining Portuguese-speaking African countries, Cape Verde registers 279 deaths associated with the disease and 31,783 cases of infection, Equatorial Guinea 120 deaths and 8662 cases, Guinea-Bissau accounts for 69 deaths and 3810 cases and Sao Tome and Principe 37 deaths and 2354 cases of infection.
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 3,824,885 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 176.5 million cases of infection, according to an assessment by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
