According to the African Union Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the cumulative total of cases on the continent since the start of the pandemic is now 8,119,719 and that of recovered cases is 7,409,626, up 23,451 in the last 24 hours.
Southern Africa remains the most affected region of the continent, with 3,833,979 cases and 107,593 deaths associated with covid-19. This region is home to the worst-hit country in the pandemic, South Africa, which has 2,873,415 cases and 85,779 deaths.
North Africa, which succeeds Southern Africa in covid-19 numbers, this Friday reached 2,472,704 infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and 66,044 deaths associated with the disease.
East Africa counts 951,558 infections and 19,675 deaths, and the West Africa region records 632,503 cases of infection and 9250 deaths. Central Africa has the fewest cases of infection and deaths, 228,975 and 3251 respectively.
Tunisia, the second African country with the most deaths after South Africa, records 24,383 deaths and 697,421 infected, followed by Egypt, with 16,921 deaths and 295,051 cases, and Morocco, which has the second highest number of infections in the entire continent, 913,423 cases, but fewer deaths than the previous two countries, 13,775 deaths associated with the disease.
Among the most affected countries are also Algeria, with 5656 deaths and 201,017 people infected, Ethiopia, with 5059 deaths and 328,735 infections, and Kenya, with 4961 deaths associated with the disease and 245,337 cumulative infections.
Regarding the portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique accounts for 1902 deaths associated with the disease and 149,804 cumulative infections since the beginning of the pandemic, followed by Angola (1371 deaths and 51,827 cases), Cape Verde (327 deaths and 36,891 infections), Equatorial Guinea (137 deaths and 11,063 cases), Guinea-Bissau (130 deaths and 6053 infected), and São Tomé and Príncipe (42 deaths and 2984 infections).
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.
Covid-19 has caused at least 4,656,833 deaths worldwide, among more than 226.31 million infections by the new coronavirus recorded since the start of the pandemic, according to the most recent assessment by the Agence France-Presse.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
