The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Ethiopia has passed 100 after 10 more positive tests in the county.
The latest data from Health Minister Lia Tadesse has shown the number of positive tests across the county has reached 105. A total of 659 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, nine of them testing positive for COVID-19, eventually bringing the total number of cases to 105.
All of the latest nine individuals, except one Equatorial Guinean national, are Ethiopians – six males and three females, according to the data. Three of the newly infected persons, two of them 19 years old and one 20, are recent deportees from Djibouti, a country that has logged more than 700 cases and two deaths. They are currently sheltered at Dire Dawa University, which has been designated as a quarantine facility. A 13-year-old Addis Ababa resident, who has come in contact with an infected person, is among those who tested positive. A 20-year-old woman who returned from Lebanon is diagnosed with the virus in Jimma, it was revealed. She was not placed under quarantine upon her arrival because of the mandatory 14-day quarantine rule was not put into place yet, the Minister of Health announced.
On Friday, the country has registered four new cases and seven others the previous day, including a 14-year-old girl who has not traveled recently. It is unknown how she contracted the virus, according to the Health Minister. There is currently one person in a critical condition, she added.
Lia Tadesse wrote on Twitter that overall 6890 coronavirus tests have been carried out in the country. Most of those tested are people who returned from overseas. Testing has been extremely limited in the country due to a lack of supply. It’s expanded in recent days though, Lia Tadesse acknowledged Thursday. The number of laboratories performing testing increased to a total of eight nationally, she said. Door-to-door visits to identify people who may require testing has also started in Addis Ababa and other towns, according to the Minister.
Since the country confirmed its first case of coronavirus on March 13, three coronavirus patients have died and 16 have recovered from the virus, Lia said.
In related news, the 20-year-old woman from Jimma town of Oromia region who has been confirmed positive for coronavirus case after arriving from Lebanon was in the country for a month before being isolated, traveling through Addis Ababa and going into another region, Deutsche Welle Amharic reported. Authorities in Limukosa woreda of Jimma zone, 350 km from Addis Ababa, are now trying to track people that she has been in contact with and identify the places she traveled before going to the hospital, according to DW. So far, thirty-nine people who have come in contact with her are in isolation and twelve of them are waiting for results, DW Amharic reported, citing the woreda administrator, Tahir Ibrahim. The woman has started to see Covid-19 symptoms a month ago and she has been moving to various places, seeking a « holy water » cure. Among others, she had stayed in Tis Abay, near Bahir Dar, for nineteen days, DW reported.
