Ethiopia Reports 4,998 New Covid Infections, Active Cases Continue to Rise

ADDIS ABABA – Ministry of health on Thursday reported nearly 5, 000 more COVID-19 infections as the number of active cases in Ethiopia shows more than threefold increase in a month.

In its daily Covid-19 report today, the Ministry of health said a little over 14,000 people have been tested in the past twenty-four hours to confirm 4,998 fresh positive cases.

The figure has pushed Ethiopia’s active total to 54,020. Thirty days ago, on Dec. 1, the number of active cases stood at 15,775.



today’s report also says Additional 10 Coronavirus-related fatalities and only 321 recoveries have also been reported in the same period, bringing the death toll to 6,926 and recoveries tally to 354, 495.

There are now 260 severely sick patients of the acute respiratory disease, it says.

Ethiopia has so far reported the largest number of Covid-19 cases in the East Africa region.

The country confirmed its first Coronavirus case in March last year. Since then, it has identified 415,443 infections after conducting close to 4.1 million tests.

Vaccine Drive

Health officials are urging the public to observe the health protocols put in place including wearing face-masks to tackle the spread of the pandemic while carrying out a national vaccine drive.



To date, the country has offered more than 10.9 million doses of Covid vaccine to the public at the national level.

Of these, about 10, 664 doses have been administered in the past 24-hours, claims the report that puts the total of fully vaccinated people at 9, 344, 106.

The East African nation started offering the vaccine to its citizens on March 13, 2021 – a week after it received 2.2 million AstraZeneca vaccines from the COVAX Facility.