Coronavirus: Two first deaths in South Africa and over a thousand infections, Public transport suspended.

The Covid-19 pandemic today claimed two lives in South Africa. The country has since crossed the barrier of a thousand infections, as announced by its Health Minister.

“This morning, we wake South Africans up with sad news that we now have our first deaths resulting from COVID-19,” Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said in a statement.

South Africa started today three weeks of general confinement across the country.

“No one will be allowed to leave their homes except in exceptional circumstances,” announced the president of Africa South, Cyril Ramaphosa.

“All shops and businesses will be closed, except for pharmacies, laboratories, banks, essential financial and payment services, including the JSE, supermarkets, petrol stations, and health care providers.

Companies that are essential to the production and transportation of food, basic goods, and medical supplies will remain open,” he said.

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The African continent has so far registered 87 deaths due to the new coronavirus to date, with more than 3,200 cases of infections in 46 countries.

Several countries have adopted preventive measures, including the quarantine regime and border closure.

Public transport suspended.

As a way of containing the pandemic, the South African authorities suspended public rail and bus services, further restricting road transport of people to half capacity per vehicle, including the driver.

The minibus taxi, principal means used by the South African population responsible for the daily transport of about 20 million people, are allowed to operate only between 05:00 and 09:00 and between 16:00 and 22:00.

However, local television showed long queues of users in stations and halts of vans taxi after 09:00 local.

In the northeast of the country, thousands of Mozambicans are congesting the Lebombo border (also known as the Komatipoort border ) to leave South Africa, the public channel SABC reported.

The province of Gauteng, surrounding Johannesburg and the engine of South Africa’s economy, with a quarter of the population of 57 million people, is the epicenter of the pandemic on the African continent with over 400 positive cases of the covid -19 confirmed by the South African authorities.

The new coronavirus, responsible for the covid -19 pandemic, has already infected 505,000 more people worldwide, of whom about 23,000 have died.

After appearing in China in December, the outbreak spread across the world, prompting the World Health Organization ( WHO ) to declare it a pandemic situation.

The European continent, with almost 275,000 infected and 16,000 dead, is the one where the highest number of cases is currently emerging, and Italy is the country in the world with the most fatalities, with 8,165 dead in 80,539 cases recorded to date.

Spain is the second country with the highest number of deaths, registering 4,089, among 56,188 confirmed cases of infection.

The countries most affected after Italy, Spain, and China are Iran, with 2,234 reported deaths (29,406 cases), France, with 1,696 deaths (29,155 cases), and the United States, with 1,178 deaths.

The United States became Thursday the country with the most cases of infections in the world, surpassing Italy, and China, with more than 85 thousand cases.