According to the latest data collated by Reuters, Africa, with a population of 1.3 billion people, had over 493,000 confirmed cases and 11,600 deaths. The WHO organised a call on April 23 with African health ministers to discuss, among other things, a lack of information sharing, Yao said. Burundi was one of the first African countries to shut its borders in March, which seemed to slow the virus’ spread initially. The Central African country has continued to provide periodic updates to the Africa CDC, which puts the number of confirmed cases there at 3,071 with 51 deaths. But even that is not possible in most of Africa because data from previous years is lacking.

Source: Standard Digital July 08, 2020 21:08 UTC