Africa records 615 more coronavirus deaths and 29,569 new cases

Africa has recorded 615 deaths associated with covid-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic to 178,160, and 29,569 newly infected, according to the latest official data.

According to the African Union Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), the total number of cases on the continent is 7,074,924 and the number recovered is 6,173,498, plus 27,668 in the last 24 hours.

Southern Africa remains the most affected region on the continent, with 3,387,890 cases and 93,239 deaths associated with covid-19. In this region is the country most affected by the pandemic, South Africa, which accounts for 2,540,222 cases and 75,012 deaths.

North Africa, which succeeds Southern Africa in the covid-19 numbers, has today, August 10 reached 2,083,862 infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and 57,008 deaths associated with the disease.

East Africa has 840,010 infections and 17,524 deaths, and the West Africa region has 551,870 cases of infection and 7,220 deaths. Central Africa has the fewest cases of infection and deaths, 211,292 and 3,169 respectively.

Tunisia, the second African country with more fatalities after South Africa, registers 21,025 deaths and 615,776 infected, followed by Egypt, with 16,582 deaths and 284,789 cases, and Morocco, which accounts for the second highest number of infections in continent-wide, has 701,325 cases, but fewer deaths than the two previous countries, and that is 10,404 deaths associated with the disease.

Among the countries most affected are also Algeria, with 4,578 deaths and 182,368 people infected, Ethiopia, with 4,430 deaths and 284,531 infections, and Kenya, with 4,179 deaths associated with the disease and 212,573 infections.

In relation to Portuguese-speaking countries, Mozambique accounts for 1,628 deaths associated with the disease and 133,177 infections accumulated since the beginning of the pandemic, followed by Angola (1,053 deaths and 47,743 cases), Cape Verde (298 deaths and 34,078 infections), Equatorial Guinea (123 deaths and 8,951 cases), Guinea-Bissau (79 dead and 4,788 infected) and São Tomé and Príncipe (37 deaths and 2,475 infections).

The first covid-19 case in Africa appeared in Egypt on February 14, 2020, and Nigeria was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to report cases of infection, on February 28.

Covid-19 has caused at least 4,294,735 deaths worldwide, out of more than 202.8 million infections with the new coronavirus registered since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the latest report by the Agence France-Presse.

The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.