ADDIS ABABA, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian Ministry of Health on Tuesday announced that the country's total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases hit 70,422 after 713 new cases were reported on Tuesday.
According to the ministry, the number of COVID-19 related deaths in the East African country reached 1,127 as of Tuesday, after 19 new COVID-19 related deaths were reported during the last 24-hours period.
The ministry said that some 28,991 patients who tested positive for COVID-19 had recovered so far, including 357 in the last 24-hour period.
According to the ministry, a total of 40,302 COVID-19 patients are still undergoing medical treatment, including 251 in severe condition.
Amid the increasing number of COVID-19 cases across the country, the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representatives (HoPR) - the lower house of the Ethiopian parliament, on Tuesday called on the general public to abide by the recommended precautionary measures so as to curtail the spread of the virus.
The call was made by Tagesse Chafo, speaker of the HoPR, during the parliament's session on the report presented by the Ethiopian Minister of Health Lia Tadesse, regarding the country's COVID-19 response efforts.
Ethiopia, Africa's second-most populous nation with about 107 million people, has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the East African region.
Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa is currently the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic accounting for more than 50 percent of all confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to the ministry.
Ethiopia had last week overtaken Nigeria to become the fourth most COVID-19 affected country in the African continent, with only South Africa, Egypt and Morocco having greater numbers of COVID-19 cases.
Ethiopia confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on March 13.
According to the latest figures from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases across the African continent has reached 1,412,699 as of Tuesday.
The continental disease control and prevention agency said in a statement that the death toll related to the pandemic now stood at 34,077 so far. Enditem
