This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 -- also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19 -- isolated from a patient in the US. Virus particles are shown emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. The spikes on the outer edge of the virus particles give coronaviruses their name, crown-like. Credit: NIAID-RML
Two cases of coronavirus have been detected in Burkina Faso, a couple who returned to the West African country from France, the government said.
About 20 cases have been reported across the African continent, and Egypt on Sunday announced its first fatality since the outbreak emerged in China in December.
"The samples, taken and analysed... have tested positive for the coronavirus," Health Minister Claudine Lougue said at a press briefing on the cases late Monday.
"One of the infected people is a Burkinabe woman who returned from France on February 24."
"The tests on her husband also proved positive," she said, adding that a third person who travelled with the couple had no symptoms but was under observation.
The woman had been staying in the east French town of Mulhouse, Lougue said.
The couple are in quarantine at the Tengandogo teaching hospital in the southern outskirts of the capital Ouagadougou.
More than 13,000 arriving passengers have been monitored with equipment installed at the Ouagadougou airport, as part of a strategy to tackle the virus at a cost of some 13 million euros ($14.6 million), according to the health ministry.
© 2020 AFP
