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MALAWI’S coronavirus tally has reached eight with the Ministry of Health confirming the first casualty in the southern African nation.

The patient was a 51-year-old Malawian woman of Indian origin who had recently returned to the country from the UK. The ministry said she had an underlying heath condition.

Of the three new cases announced today, two of the patients are in the city of Blantyre and the other in Chikwawa town. Malawi was one of the African countries that recorded a case very late. So far only Comoros and Lesotho have yet to be infected.

Infected women deliver in Cameroon, Uganda

The BBC reports that a patient undergoing treatment for coronavirus in the Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, gave birth to a baby girl over the weekend, quoting a doctor at the hospital’s isolation ward.

The mother, 19-year-old Marie, gave birth normally but has since been separated from her newborn baby. The patient was connected to an oxygen supply when her contractions started, the report added.

“We just arranged the room and she delivered on her bed while on oxygen,” Dr Yaneu Ngaha Bondja Junie, a gynaecologist at the hospital, told the BBC.

The baby was born prematurely weighing 2.1kg (4.6lb) and is in the neonatal unit. It is not clear if the baby is infected as her tests are still being processed, but she is being fed with breast milk from her mother.

It is the second known birth of a child by a COVID-19 patient. Over the weekend, portals in Uganda confirmed the birth through Caesarean section of a healthy baby.

The Daily Monitor gave the following details. The 22-year-old Ugandan mother gave birth to a healthy baby girl at Entebbe Grade B Hospital. She was reportedly infected by her husband who returned from Dubai recently.

“The patient gave birth very well this afternoon through a Caesarean Section and the mother and baby are in good health,” Dr Moses Muwonge, the director of the hospital is quoted to have said.

africanews.com