THE COVID-19 virus continued its inexorable march into sub-Saharan Africa whilst South Africa reported six new cases after testing 600 people potentially with the virus, said Bloomberg News.
Four tested positive in Gauteng province, the nation’s economic heartland, while the other two were found in the provinces of Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, the newswire said.
“The identification of additional imported cases of Covid-19 is not unexpected and is likely related to increasing numbers of cases in other parts of the world, leading to increased importation risk,” the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) was quoted to have said in an article by BusinessLive.
South Africa’s first seven coronavirus cases were among a party of 10 who visited an Italian ski resort at the end of February. One of the members of the group returned to London, and the remaining two have tested negative, according to the NICD.
In addition to South Africa’s 13 cases, seven other nations in sub-Saharan Africa now have confirmed infections and several governments are moving toward requiring travellers from affected countries to go into quarantine. Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa grower, also announced its first case, said Bloomberg News.
One of the country’s to report COVID-19 cases is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which revised the identity of its sole patient. He is a 52-year-old Congolese national who resides in France, and not a Belgian citizen as reported Tuesday, according to the World Health Organization’s office in the country.
The WHO provided testing kits to Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research and other laboratories, as well as training to laboratory technicians to detect the virus, said Bloomberg News citing a statement.
