SOUTH AFRICA’s Minister of Health,  Zweli Mkhize, on Thursday, announced that the country has recorded its first case of the COVID-19 also known as Coronavirus.

South Africa is the fourth African country to have a confirmed case of COVID-19, raising the recorded number of infected persons in the continent to eight.

Nigeria, Senegal and Algeria are the three other countries. Egypt was reported to have recorded a case of the virus, but it was categorised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) under East Mediterrianian Region.

Mkhize made the announcement in a tweet, where he said that the National Institute for Communicable Diseases confirmed that a suspected case of COVID-19 in the country tested positive.

He further said that the patient is a 38-year-old man who arrived from Italy with his wife on Sunday.

The minister revealed that the patient has been in isolation since Tuesday and a tracer team has been activated to trace all contact made by the man.

He added that the patient is a father of two.

According to the WHO latest situation report, COVID-19 which originated from China and began spreading in December, has now infected over 93,000 people globally, and killed over 3,000 people.

In Nigeria, a single case of an Italian citizen who tested positive to the virus is still keeping the country on its toes.

Meanwhile, barely 14 days after The ICIR reported that Nigeria was unprepared to battle Coronavirus following findings that no single isolation ward or centre existed in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Senate President, Ahmad Lawan confirmed that the nation was not ready to fight the outbreak.

Lawan who led a delegation of the National Assembly leadership to the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH) on Wednesday, submitted in a series of tweet that Abuja and the six surrounding states in the whole of the North-Central has no isolation ward or centre which can be used to handle any case of Coronavirus.