"In the past four weeks, globally the 55 member states of the African Union have seen, on average, a 10 percent decrease in the number of new cases of covid-19," said the director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at African Union (AU), Jonh Nkegasong, during the weekly press conference.
By regions, John Nkegasong said that North Africa (+8.7 percent) and East Africa (+2 percent) recorded an increase in new cases during the same period, while in Central Africa (-33 percent), in Southern Africa (-22 per cent) and in West Africa (-16 per cent) there was a decrease.
"We see trends that are going in the right direction, but we have to maintain and intensify the measures that we have already proven to work. We have seen this in other regions, the pandemic seems to be decreasing and then resurfacing. We have to be very careful because we are far from over. We must continue to intensify our efforts, "said the Africa CDC official.
"Although the trend is downward, we have to remember that they are just trends. We are in the right direction as a continent, but the battle is far from won," he added, highlighting the many uncertainties that remain regarding the behavior of the new coronavirus.
Analyzing last week's data, John Nkegasong said the continent had 53,000 new covid-19 infections, representing a 5.2 percent reduction in the number of new infections compared to the previous week.
About 70 percent of covid-19 cases remain concentrated in five countries: South Africa (49 percent), Egypt (8 percent), Morocco (6 percent), Ethiopia (5 percent) and Nigeria (4 Percent).
"Morocco has seen a very significant increase in recent weeks and now has 70,000 more cases, while Egypt has exceeded 100,000 cases," said the Africa CDC director.
The countries with the highest number of new cases in the past week were Morocco, South Africa, Ethiopia, Libya and Algeria.
Among the countries with the highest cumulative number of infections per 100,000 inhabitants are South Africa (1000), Cape Verde (746), Djibouti (549), São Tomé and Príncipe (449) and Gabon (411).
The continent has carried out more than 12.7 million tests since the beginning of the pandemic, a 6 percent increase from last week.
About 80 percent of the tests were done in South Africa, Morocco, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda.
Africa recorded 201 deaths due to covid-19 in the last 24 hours, reaching a total of 31,902, in 1,321,736 cases of infection, according to the latest pandemic figures on the continent.
According to the African Union's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), in the last 24 hours there were 8517 new cases in the organization's 55 member states and a further 8770 patients recovered, for a total of 1,059,337 .
The largest number of cases and deaths continues to be registered in Southern Africa, with 693,691 infections and 16,249 deaths. South Africa alone, the continent's most affected country, accounts for 642,431 cases and 15,168 deaths.
North Africa, the second most affected area by the pandemic, now has 258,298 people infected and 9188 dead and in West Africa the number of infections has risen to 166,375 and that of fatalities to 2491.
In the East African region, the number of cases of covid-19 is 147,794 and 2924 deaths, and in Central Africa there are 55,578 cases and 1050 deaths.
Egypt, which is the second African country with the most fatalities, after South Africa, has 5577 deaths and 100,403, followed by Algeria, with 1575 deaths and 46,927 cases.
Morocco accounts for 77,878 infected and 1453 fatalities.
In the six most affected countries are also Nigeria, with 55,632 infected and 1070 dead, and Ethiopia, with 61,700 infected and with 966 deaths.
Among African countries that have Portuguese as their official language, Angola leads in number of deaths and Equatorial Guinea in number of cases.
Angola records 126 deaths and 3092 cases, followed by Equatorial Guinea (83 dead and 4990 cases), Cape Verde (43 dead and 4473 cases), Guinea-Bissau (39 dead and 2275 cases), Mozambique (28 dead and 4764 cases) ) and São Tomé and Príncipe (15 dead and 896 cases).
