COVID-19 cases in Somalia cross 300 as daily average hits 30

Forty-two new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Somalia in the last 24 hours bringing to 328 the number of confirmed cases.

The Ministry of Health announced Thursday one of the cases was found in southern Galkayo adding two more people died totaling 16 the number of people who have died of the disease.

Two people have recovered from the disease in the last 24 hours bringing to eight those who have recovered, the government said. The Ministry has however ceased publishing information on the number of tests making it difficult to understand the scale of the spread of the disease.

The number of COVID-19 cases in the last one and half weeks has averaged 30 with the highest recorded on Monday hitting 73. Somalia now becomes the second most affected  country in the eastern Africa region   behind Djibouti which has  974 cases.

Meanwhile, Police Commissioner Abdi Hassan Mohamed has extended the curfew time in Mogadishu by an hour in additional measures to curb the spread of the global pandemic.

Mohamed said the from tomorrow, the curfew begins from 7pm to 5am. The government had set the previous curfew to run from 8pm to 5am