Ethiopia reports a new COVID-19 case, 12 recoveries

Ethiopia reported 123 confirmed coronaviruses after the confirmation of a new case, Health Minister Lia Tadesse said on Sunday.

The case is a 30-year-old Ethiopian citizen with a history of travel from Puntland in northeast Somalia. The patient is currently in mandatory quarantine.

“Only one person was confirmed positive among 957 laboratory tests performed. Most of the samples are analyzed in people in mandatory quarantine and in confirmed case contacts, “Tadesse said in a statement.

Tadesse cautioned that the result of tests that culminated in a single positive case does not necessarily indicate a significant change in the course of the virus’s spread.

“However, the result did not affirm that the outbreak has ended in our country, but rather shows that those that are detected and evaluated are negative.”

Tadesse also reported that 12 people, from the capital Addis Ababa, had recovered from the virus, bringing the total number of recoveries to 41. So far, Ethiopia has only had three deaths from the virus.

Ethiopia will embark on door-to-door testing of new Coronavirus cases in the country in a quest to screen at least 4,000 people daily.