The death toll in Africa due to covid-19 has risen to 8,618, an additional 284 in the last 24 hours, in around 324,000 cases, according to the most recent data on the continent’s pandemic.
According to the African Union’s Disease Control and Prevention Center (Africa CDC), the number of infected people is 324,696, plus 9,286 cases in the last 24 hours.
The number of recovered is 154,170, plus 4,188.
Southern Africa records the highest number of cases (110,756) and accounts for 2,160 deaths, the vast majority concentrated in South Africa, the country with the most infected across the continent (106,108) and which has 2,102 fatalities.
North Africa leads in the number of deaths (3,618), in 85,343 infections.
West Africa counts 1,180 deaths out of 64,957 infected, East Africa reports 980 fatalities and 32,644 cases, while in Central Africa there are 680 deaths out of 30,996 infections.
Egypt, the African country with the most fatalities, currently counts 2,365 dead and 58,141 cases of infection, followed by South Africa and then Algeria, with 861 fatalities and 12,076 infected.
Among the five most affected countries is Nigeria, with 533 dead and 21,371 infected, and Sudan, with 548 deaths, despite having a lower number of infections (8,889).
As for the Portuguese-speaking African countries, Guinea-Bissau has the most infections and deaths, with 1,556 cases and 19 fatalities.
Cape Verde has 983 infections and eight deaths and Mozambique counts 757 infected patients and five dead.
Sao Tome and Principe counts 707 cases and 12 deaths and Angola has 189 confirmed cases of covid-19 and ten deaths.
Equatorial Guinea, which is part of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), has 2,001 cases and keeps 32 dead, according to Africa CDC.
The first case of covid-19 in Africa emerged in Egypt on 14 February, and Nigeria was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to register cases of infection on 28 February.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 473,000 deaths and infected more than 9.1 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French agency AFP.
The disease is spread by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
