The number of covid-19 cases in Africa increased 2% in the last week, reaching 10.1 million, of which 233,000 people died.

The director of the African Union Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said today, that eight countries, including Guinea-Bissau, are already experiencing the fifth wave of the pandemic and a total of 39 countries, seven more than last week, have already registered cases of the Omicron variant of the new coronavirus, he added.

"As of today, January 13, a total of 10.1 million cases of covid-19 have been recorded on the continent, so we have reached the important milestone of 10 million cases, and of that number 233,000 individuals have unfortunately died," John Nkengasong said at his weekly press conference by videoconference from Addis Ababa, the headquarters of the Africa CDC quoted by Lusa.

Of the 54 member states of the African Union, 46 are experiencing the fourth wave, of which 28 are experiencing a very severe fourth wave, the official said.

According to the official, between January 2 and 9, the African continent recorded 307,000 new cases, most of them (43%) in southern Africa, and 2,618 new deaths, which represents an increase of 85% in the number of new cases compared to the previous week.

John Nkengason explained that this was expected, given the increase in new cases in recent weeks, recalling that the number of deaths usually follows that of new cases with a two-week lag.

In the four-week trend, the Africa CDC recorded a 11% increase in the number of new cases and a 33% increase in the number of new deaths.

"We are now starting to see what we predicted before the holidays: that after the holiday season we would see a sharp increase in cases and that is what we are seeing now," said the Africa CDC director.

John Nkengasong also said that since the start of the pandemic 91.1 million tests have been performed, of which 1.5 million were performed in the last week (15% more than the previous week) and that the cumulative positivity rate remains at 11%.

As for vaccines, the official said that African countries have so far received 663 million doses, of which they have administered 340 million, which is 60.4% of the total.