102 cases, 1 death confirmed in Africa from COVID-19

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia

The number of coronavirus cases in Africa has reached 102 confirmed with one death, said the African Union's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

This came in an update Africa CDC head Dr. John Nkengasong gave to reporters at the African Union headquarters on Tuesday.

COVID-19 hit a number of northern, western and southern African countries since a first case was confirmed in Egypt on Feb. 14.

“As of today, there are about 102 cases in 10 African countries, with one death,” Nkengasong said, listing the affected countries as Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Togo and Tunisia.

Describing some of the activities of Africa CDC, Nkengasong said: “Africa CDC has distributed testing kits capable of testing over 10,000 people, purchasing more emergency medical items including test kits, thermal scanners and other critical medical supplies and stockpiling them to meet the requests from member states."

“Hundreds of representatives of member states have been trained in enhanced surveillance, infection prevention and control, risk communication and case management.

“43 African countries now have the capacity to test for the virus and have supplies of test kits,” he added.

“80% of people infected have very mild symptoms,” he said in response to a question if black people were genetically more immune to the virus. “There is no scientific evidence on this.”

According to him, it might be also that the vast majority of the population in Africa is young that the spread of the virus so far has relatively been slower compared to elsewhere.

The coronavirus was first detected last December in Wuhan, China.

The global death toll from the coronavirus is now over 4,000, with more than 110,000 confirmed cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) recorded.

According to Worldometer, a website which compiles new case numbers, the coronavirus has spread to more than 115 countries and territories, including 7,513 in South Korea, 9,172 in Italy, 7,161 in Iran, 530 in Japan, 1,412 in France, 729 in the U.S. and 321 in the U.K.

As part of efforts to contain the outbreak, governments have closed borders and suspended land and air travel with the worst-hit countries.

In a Monday press briefing, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom said with coronavirus present in so many countries, the threat of a pandemic had "become very real."