Coronavirus kills 91 people as over 3,000 infected across all of Africa

Although this toll is far lower than in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, experts say the world´s poorest continent is over 3,000.

By AFP
March 28, 2020
AFP/Files

Coronavirus has infected 3,340 people across all of Africa, killing 91, according to an AFP tally as of mid-day Friday.

Although this toll is far lower than in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, experts say the world's poorest continent is over 3,000.

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In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country's pointman on the pandemic said the first case of coronavirus had been detected outside Kinshasa — an individual in the trouble-torn eastern province of North Kivu, which is also the centre of a now-waning epidemic of Ebola.

As of Thursday, the DRC had 54 cases, four of them fatalities, said crisis coordinator Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe.

The DRC's sprawling capital, Kinshasa, goes into lockdown on Saturday for four days, followed by two days to allow residents to shop followed by another four-day lockdown, in a rotation to be continued over three weeks.

A citizens' movement called Lucha has criticised the move as "senseless" adding "the only thing that can result is a humanitarian catastrophe or riots."

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