Africa’s top public health official says the continent has seen a 20 percent decrease in confirmed coronavirus cases in the past week, but he warns that “we shouldn’t go home celebrating that our pandemic is over.”
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John Nkengasong with the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells reporters that testing and other efforts to contain the virus are largely working, but just one or two cases could reignite infections.
He says 23 of Africa’s 54 countries have reported a sustained decrease in new confirmed cases in the past couple of weeks.
A health worker takes a nasal swab from a patient to test for COVID-19 in Cape Town, South Africa on July 23, 2020. (AP)
The African continent has reported more than 1.2 million confirmed cases, roughly half in South Africa.
More than 11 million tests for the virus have been conducted across the continent of 1.3 billion people, and Nkengasong says the new goal is an additional 20 million tests by November.
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