Morocco’s health ministry on Monday said the country has recorded its first coronavirus case.
The patient was a Moroccan man living in Italy who just returned to the country.
Health officials say he has since been isolated and receiving health care at a hospital in Casablanca.
According to a ministry of health statement, the patient’s health condition is not critical.
Earlier on Monday Tunisia and Senegal also confirmed their first cases of the deadly coronavirus, joining Nigeria, Egypt and Algeria as previous African countries that have now confirmed cases.
Tunisia’s country’s health minister Abdelatif el-Maki told journalists on Monday that a 40-year-old Tunisian man, who arrived in the country by boat from Italy on 27 February tested positive for the virus.
In the case Senegal the country’s health minister, Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr said the patient is a French man who lives in Senegal.
He flew back from France on 26 February, Mr Sarr told journalists in the capital, Dakar on Monday.
Senegalese officials say they are now monitoring everyone who travelled on the same flight with the patient as well as his family.
The case in Senegal is the second in sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria last week confirmed one case.
Africa so far has 9 cases, still a low outbreak rate compared to other continents and that baffles health experts especially who had feared for Africa due to weak health systems.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization revealed in a meeting with African Union health ministers on February 22 that “Our biggest concern continues to be the potential for Covid-19 to spread in countries with weaker health systems.”
But with more than 86,000 cases and over 3,000 deaths recorded in some 60 countries worldwide, Africa has relatively reported of low outbreak rate.
Victims of coronavirus often suffer from respiratory illness and this new strain of coronavirus was not previously identified in humans.
First man with coronavirus in Africa ‘no longer’ carries the virus
Source: Africafeeds.com
