Home News Corona virus spreads to second African country, death toll now 2,715 globally

Corona virus spreads to second African country, death toll now 2,715 globally

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has named Algeria as the second African country to be affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, which has now killed 2, 715 persons and infected over 78, 064 across 47 countries.

This is even as the WHO African region has called on Nigeria and other African countries to ramp up their preparedness activities for the virus, as the window of opportunity available to African countries for preparation was closing.

In a statement made available on Wednesday, the Regional Director, WHO Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said Algeria’s Ministry of Health had alerted the global health body of a 61 year old Italian who arrived the country February 17 from Italy, and tested positive to the virus.

Africa’s first COVID-19 case was reported earlier this month in Egypt, with the patient said to be recovering from the infection.

Algeria is one of the 47 countries in the WHO African region.

Moeti said: “The window of opportunity the continent has had to prepare for coronavirus disease is closing. All countries must ramp up their preparedness activities.”

“WHO is preparing to deploy a team of experts to Algeria to support health authorities.”

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Algeria is also one of 13 countries which WHO has identified as a top priority for preparedness measures due to their direct links or high volume of travel to China. Nigeria was named on same list.

Countries so far affected are Bahrain, Israel, Italy, Egypt, Canada, United States, Iran, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, France, Afghanistan, Israel, Kuwait, UAE, Vietnam, United Kingdom, India, Russia, Nepal, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, Croatia, Finland, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, Philippine, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Algeria, China, among others.

Source : ThisDay

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