Africa's COVID-19 cases pass 1.25 mln as death toll approaches 30,000

ADDIS ABABA - The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Tuesday said that the death toll from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has climbed to 29,833 across the African continent as the number of positive cases rose to 1,252,552.

The Africa CDC, noting that five African countries account for over 70 percent of all COVID-19 infections in the continent that are South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria and Ethiopia, also stressed that some 985,803 people who were infected with COVID-19 had recovered across the continent so far.

Amid the rapid spread of the virus across the continent, South Africa alone accounts for about 50 percent of all COVID-19 infections in the continent, followed by Egypt which has close to eight percent of all COVID-19 infections in the continent, the Africa CDC said.

The continental disease control and prevention agency said that South Africa is way ahead compared to the rest of the continent both in terms of number of COVID-19 cases and ratio of COVID-19 infected population, the country has so far reported 627,041 cases and 14,149 deaths as of Tuesday.

The southern Africa country, which has so far conducted 3,693,721 COVID-19 medical tests, has so far registered 540,923 COVID-19 recoveries, and has 2.3 case fatality ratio, it was noted.