Nigeria now has more Covid-19 infections than Ghana, as cases hit 84,000 in Africa

PRETORIA - The World Health Organisation on Monday said that Nigeria has surpassed Ghana in having the highest number of Covid-19 infections in West Africa, data showed on Monday.

Figures on real-time data portal Worldometer indicated that Africa's most populous country was currently sitting on 5,959 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 182 deaths, while Ghana, which sometimes leads the region in terms of the infection tally, had 5,735 cases, of which 29 people had died.

The Worldometer Africa dashboard shows that South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria and Ghana, in that order, continue to have the highest number of reported coronavirus cases on the continent.

South Africa now has 15,515 cases and 261 fatalities, followed by Egypt with 12,229 cases and 630 deaths.

Algeria, which now has the third highest infections having surpassed Morocco, has 7,019 confirmed cases and 548 deaths. Morocco has 6,952 infections and 192 deaths.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that the number of coronavirus cases in Africa has risen to over 84,000 in the past 24 hours.

The United Nations health agency gave the update on its official Twitter account on Monday.

According to the tweet, Covid-19 has killed 2,700 people on the continent, while 32,000 people have recovered from the virus.

Since the virus emerged in Wuhan, China, last December, it has spread to 188 countries and regions.

According to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University, the global death toll from the novel coronavirus has exceeded 315,000, with more than 4.7 million confirmed cases and recoveries of over 1.73 million.