South Africa became the first African country to exceed one million infections, Sunday, December 27, after the announcement of the latest figures by its Minister of Health.
In the midst of the second wave of the pandemic and while a more transmissible variant of the coronavirus is responsible for a large majority of new cases, the most affected country on the African continent has officially recorded more than a million positive cases and 26,735 dead.
As of Sunday at 7 p.m. local time, Africa had more than 2.6 million cases and 62,649 deaths, according to a count made by AFP from reports provided by health authorities.
Government is considering further restrictions
Last week, South Africa recorded an average of 11,700 new infections per day, an increase of 39% from the previous week.
For three consecutive days - Wednesday, Thursday and Friday - the number of cases exceeded 14,000 per day, an all-time high in the country.
On Saturday and Sunday, that number weakened, falling below the thousand mark.
The government is considering imposing further restrictions and President Cyril Ramaphosa could address the country on television this week, as he has done regularly since the start of the pandemic.
In Africa, the second most affected country is Morocco (432,079 cases and 7,240 deaths), followed by Egypt (131,315 cases, 7,352 deaths), Tunisia (130,230 cases, 4,426 deaths) and the Ethiopia (122,413 cases, 1,901 deaths).
Africa remains one of the continents least affected by Covid-19.
Europe has more than 25 million infections, the United States and Canada 19.5 million, Latin America and the Caribbean 15 million, Asia 13.7 million and the Middle East nearly 4 million.
With AFP
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