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AFP
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia on Sunday announced the first two deaths of patients suffering from COVID-19, as officials ramped up testing to get a clearer picture of the outbreak there.
The first victim was a 60-year-old Ethiopian woman who had spent six days in intensive care, a health ministry statement said, with the second a 56-year-old Ethiopian man diagnosed with COVID-19 last Thursday.
“It is my deepest regret to announce the first death of a patient from #COVID19 in Ethiopia,” Health Minister Lia Tadesse said in announcing the country’s first fatality on Twitter.
Four hours later, Lia published a second post expressing “great sadness” as another death emerged.
Ethiopia, a country of more than 100 million people, confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 13 and has recorded just 43 in total -- mostly people with a history of recent foreign travel.
But testing has been extremely limited.
As of Friday, the country had conducted just 1,222 tests, according to the Ethiopian Public Health Institute.
South Africa, by comparison, has performed tens of thousands of tests.
Ethiopian officials said Saturday they were conducting an additional 647 tests, notably of targeted health workers, transportation sector workers who have “direct contact with passengers” and randomly selected people in Addis Ababa, the capital, and the city of Adama in the Oromia region.
It was intended to help determine whether there has been undetected community transmission, said Dr Adisu Kebede, director of national laboratory capacity building.
“There are also a few cases that we identified that have no travel history and things like that, and from their contacts, you can guess that there is community transmission already,” Adisu said.
“The WHO recommended ‘test, test, test,’ so we had to test more people,” he added.
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia on Sunday announced the first two deaths of patients suffering from COVID-19, as officials ramped up testing to get a clearer picture of the outbreak there.
The first victim was a 60-year-old Ethiopian woman who had spent six days in intensive care, a health ministry statement said, with the second a 56-year-old Ethiopian man diagnosed with COVID-19 last Thursday.
“It is my deepest regret to announce the first death of a patient from #COVID19 in Ethiopia,” Health Minister Lia Tadesse said in announcing the country’s first fatality on Twitter.
Four hours later, Lia published a second post expressing “great sadness” as another death emerged.
Ethiopia, a country of more than 100 million people, confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 13 and has recorded just 43 in total -- mostly people with a history of recent foreign travel.
But testing has been extremely limited.
As of Friday, the country had conducted just 1,222 tests, according to the Ethiopian Public Health Institute.
South Africa, by comparison, has performed tens of thousands of tests.
Ethiopian officials said Saturday they were conducting an additional 647 tests, notably of targeted health workers, transportation sector workers who have “direct contact with passengers” and randomly selected people in Addis Ababa, the capital, and the city of Adama in the Oromia region.
It was intended to help determine whether there has been undetected community transmission, said Dr Adisu Kebede, director of national laboratory capacity building.
“There are also a few cases that we identified that have no travel history and things like that, and from their contacts, you can guess that there is community transmission already,” Adisu said.
“The WHO recommended ‘test, test, test,’ so we had to test more people,” he added.
