South Africa surpassed 1 million confirmed novel coronavirus (COVID-19) cases on Sunday, with the total number of people infected with the coronavirus standing at 1,004,413, the highest in Africa.
“Today, we have breached the 1 million mark cumulative cases of COVID-19 in South Africa,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced.
He said in the part 24-hour period, there were 9,502 new confirmed cases while 214 lives were lost to COVID-19, which brought the total to 26,735 deaths.
Over 6 million coronavirus tests both in the public and private sectors have been conducted so far.
Mkhize appealed to citizens to play their role in curbing the spread of the virus.
“We must adhere to non-pharmaceutical interventions to prevent the further spread of the virus,” he said.
It took two weeks for South Africa to reach 900,000 from 800,000 cases. However, it took only nine days to reach the 1 million mark after the country reported 900,000 cases.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the African continent reached 2,644,112 as of Sunday afternoon, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.
The continental disease control and prevention agency said in a statement that the death toll related to the pandemic stood at 62,366 while a total of 2,212,975 people infected with COVID-19 have recovered across the continent as of Sunday afternoon.
The most affected African countries in terms of the number of positive cases include South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, figures from the Africa CDC showed.
