South Africa confirmed its first coronavirus case after a 38-year-old man who traveled to Italy tested positive, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has said.
A tracer team has been sent to South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province along with epidemiologists
The man with the virus, who was part of a group of 10 people who traveled to Italy, returned home on Sunday and has been self-isolating since Tuesday.
It has taken more than two months for the virus to reach South African from mainland China, where it originated. Globally the number of confirmed cases tops 96,000 with more than 3,300 people having died.
Other African countries with confirmed cases include Nigeria, Senegal, Egypt and Algeria. While countries like South Africa have prepared for the arrival of the coronavirus, smaller African economies with poor health-care systems may struggle to contain the outbreak.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that public health officials are operating in “uncharted territory” as they combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected more than 90,000 people across 73 countries and territories as of Monday evening.
The virus has spread to every continent except Antarctica since it was first identified in December last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Medical workers are now battling deadly outbreak clusters in South Korea, Iran and Italy, while other countries are working furiously to avoid a similar fate by readying public health authorities, alerting their citizens and enacting travel restrictions to affected areas.
