The Ministry of Health of Ethiopia today announced that it has found eight new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases including a 9 month child and his mother.
Now the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has reached 52 of which two have passed away, while four have recovered so far. The Ministry today stated that one coronavirus patient is currently in critical condition. The report of the Ministry shows that Ethiopia has conducted a total of 264 COVID-19 laboratory tests in the last 24 hours.
This is for the first time for Ethiopia to conduct laboratory test for COVID-19 for over 100 people suspected of aquiring the virus. The number of tested people increased following the addition of two new testing institutions, which shared the service that has been conducted by the Public Health Institute of Ethiopia. Out of the eight new cases reported today five have returned from Dubai, United Arab Emirates recently and have been in quarantine.
It is stated that a twenty five years old woman who recently returned from Thailand and a 19 years old male Ethiopian national who has no international travel history are also among the new patients of coronavirus in Ethiopia. The report stated that the 19 years old young man was in quarantine because he was suspected of having contact with COVID-19 positive people the Ministry has identified earlier. The other individual by coronavirus is an Eritrean woman who came from London and was in quarantine in Addis Ababa.
As the number of COVID-19 positive people in Ethiopia is increasing the City Administration of Addis Ababa yesterday ordered taxi service providers to use only half of their passenger chairs charging each person for two chairs. The measure is to avoid suffocations within public transports, which can spread the spread of the global pandemic.
The taxi service providers in Addis Ababa are also ordered not to provide service after 8 o’clock in the evening and not to start operation before 6 in the morning. Meanwhile the public transport providers mainly business can operate as usual without time limit as long as they cut the number of their passengers by 50 percent.
Unconfirmed government preparedness plan of the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia released by a media this morning shows that as far as 28 million people are likely to be infected by the coronavirus if the government managed to combat the spread properly. Of which Between 21,000 to over 25,600 people are also estimated to die by the pandemic in Ethiopia during the first three months, according to Wazema Radio (wazemaradio.com/) report based on leaked document.