The number of registered Covid-19 infection across Africa’s 54 nations has now surpassed the 1.5 million mark, according to the continent’s World Health Organization chapter.

Sunday’s daily coronavirus update showed that 1,505,244 cases of infection have been registered since the beginning of the pandemic and led to 36,319 established fatalities.

South Africa accounts for about half of both metric, posting nearly 680,000 infections and 16,938 deaths.

Egypt has the highest number of cases in North Africa with 103,575 Covid-19 cases registered in total with just under 6,000 deaths.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, just under 60,000 people have tested positive for the virus and 1,113 have died.

As a whole, Africa’s epidemiological situation has so far fallen short of the dire predictions posited at the beginning of the pandemic.

Experts are studying why this is, given the continent’s gargantuan population of over 1.2 billion people, with a relatively young and more rural population, less interconnectivity with the rest of the world and a lower testing capacity seen as the main possible explanations. The economic impact of the pandemic on the impoverished continent has remains a cause for concern.