Algeria has registered its first death from the novel coronavirus, the health ministry announced on Thursday.
No further details on the death were provided in the ministry statement.
Meanwhile, another five new cases of COVID-19 have been recorded, bringing the total number of confirmed cases on North African nation’s soil to 24.
The first index case to be recorded in the country and a 25th case, which concerns an Italian who tested positive in February, has since left Algeria.
And of the five new cases announced on Thursday, two are Algerians who had been in France and they have been hospitalised in the Souk Ahras area of eastern Algeria, and the Kabylie region east of the capital Algiers.
The other three cases were being treated in a hospital in the Blida area, South-West of Algiers, where 17 members of the same family had already been infected with the virus, in connection with confirmed cases among Algerians in France.
The health ministry therefore urged all Algerians planning to travel to countries where the novel coronavirus is active to defer their trips, and for Algerians returning from those countries to postpone “family visits, unless absolutely necessary.”
