Simon Ateba is Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa. Simon covers President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial and international institutions in Washington D.C. and New York City.
There were no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Africa on Tuesday morning, January 28, 2020, Dr. John Nkengasong, Director, Africa Center for Disease Control, CDC, said at a news conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Addressing journalists at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis, Dr. Nkengasong said over 4400 people have been affected worldwide, with more than 4000 of them in China alone.
He said this was not a time for complacency as the virus was spreading fast and had already hit the United States, Hongkong, Thailand, South Korea, France, Germany, Vietnam, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Canada and Cambodia. The virus has also killed at least 107 people, he added.
Dr. Nkengasong said there was also good news, as at least 63 people who contracted the virus had recovered.
He said Africa has deployed an incident management system to manage the outbreak across our continent and was updating African countries as information becomes available.
