Number of COVID-19 cases in South Africa rises to 16

South Africa announced Thursday that the number of people in the country who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus has reached 16 as the deadly virus spreads across the continent.

“As of March 12, 16 people have tested positive for COVID-19,” the Health Department said in a statement, adding cases have now been reported in four of the country’s nine provinces.

The latest cases include a 38-year-old man from the coastal city of Durban who lives in Turkey but was visiting his mother in South Africa.

Another patient is a 27-year-old woman from Mpumalanga province who had traveled to the United States.

Another is a 43-year-old man from Gauteng province who had traveled to Dubai and New York.

South Africa has so far conducted 848 tests, with 16 people testing positive and 832 testing negative, according to a statement from the government-run National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

No deaths from the virus have been reported in South Africa so far.

Most of the patients in the country contracted the virus through travel overseas, especially in Europe and America.

The novel coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China last December and has spread to at least 114 countries.

The global death toll is now over 4,600, with more than 124,500 confirmed cases, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which has declared the outbreak a pandemic.