The World Health Organization on Wednesday hailed "tremendous progress" in the fight against the deadly new coronavirus since it emerged in China in December.
"We are making tremendous progress in a short period of time ... trends are very encouraging but we are not at a turning point yet," said Richard Brennan, WHO's regional emergency director, at a press conference in Cairo.
The death toll from the COVID-19 virus jumped past 2,000 on Wednesday, almost all of them in mainland China where 74,185 cases of infection have been confirmed.
Egypt's health ministry announced last week the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in Africa, a foreigner whose nationality was not revealed.
In a joint statement with Egypt's Ministry of Health and Population on Wednesday, the WHO noted that the person had shown a "negative" response upon further testing.
"After 48 hours of being admitted to the isolation unit in the hospital, further PCR tests revealed a negative result for the carrier of ..
