South Sudan on Sunday confirmed the first case of COVID-19, making it the 51st of Africa’s 54 countries to register the disease.
According to the First Vice President Riek Machar and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, the patient is a 29-year-old female UN staff who arrived in the country from the Netherlands on February 28.
“She has since been put under quarantine at UN premises and health workers are tracing the people who had been in contact with her with the hope the measures would contain the pandemic,” a source privy to the matter told watchdoguganda.com.
Also, to prevent the spread of the virus all over the country, President Salva Kiir last week imposed an 8p.m. to 6a.m curfew for six weeks. He also closed borders, airports, schools, churches and mosques.
“In addition to the above, the UN is following everyone who was on the same flight with the first victim. This means that any UN staff that used the same flight from Addis Ababa has been quarantined for 14 days.”
“Security alert status has been changed from green to grey! This means no movement of staff outside the UN compound. Only combatants will move with the approval of the head of the mission,” the source added.
South Sudan has also deployed forces outside all UN compounds across the country.
“No one is allowed to either enter or exit the compounds. This is demised on the fact that the first covid19 victim was a UN staff,” the source added.
With the disease in South Sudan, now just three countries in Africa have not reported any cases of COVID-19: the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa, and the island nations of Comoros and Sao Tome and Principe.
Globally they are over 1,275,856 confirmed cases, 262,999 have recovered from the disease while 69,514 people have died.
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