HARARE – Zimbabwe’s coronavirus deaths breached the 100 mark on Friday as the health ministry reported five new deaths.

The latest data came as the number of Covid-19 cases in Africa rose to over one million, with more than half registered in South Africa.

The continent’s worst-hit nation had registered 545,476 infections, including over 7,000 new cases on Friday, and 9,909 deaths.

Egypt has recorded over 95,000 Covid-19 cases while the figure in Nigeria is 45,000.

Zimbabwe has reported 4,451 cases including 56 on Friday. President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government says 1,345 patients have recovered.

The death toll stands at 102 following the latest deaths which the ministry of health said were from postmortems on people who died at home and in hospitals between August 3 and 5.

The death toll is likely higher. Government critics say not enough testing is being done with only 69,103 tests conducted to date. For perspective, South Africa has conducted 3.18 million tests.

South Africa’s infection figures are the fifth-highest after the US, Brazil, India and Russia.

Nevertheless, the African continent remains one of the least affected, according to the official figures, with only Oceania registering fewer Covid-19 cases.

But the official numbers are likely to be a fraction of the real extent of the virus’ spread throughout Africa where a number of countries have failing healthcare systems and limited screening capacities.

Worldwide there have been some 19 million recorded coronavirus cases resulting in over 709,000 deaths.