COVID-19 infects over 3,000 people, killing 91 in African continent

Coronavirus has infected 3,340 people across all of Africa, killing 91, according to an AFP tally as of mid-day Friday.

Although this toll is far lower than in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, experts say the world´s poorest continent is over 3,000.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country´s pointman on the pandemic said the first case of coronavirus had been detected outside Kinshasa -- an individual in the trouble-torn eastern province of North Kivu, which is also the centre of a now-waning epidemic of Ebola.

As of Thursday, the DRC had 54 cases, four of them fatalities, said crisis coordinator Professor Jean-Jacques Muyembe.

The DRC´s sprawling capital, Kinshasa, goes into lockdown on Saturday for four days, followed by two days to allow residents to shop followed by another four-day lockdown, in a rotation to be continued over three weeks.

A citizens´ movement called Lucha has criticised the move as "senseless" adding "the only thing that can result is a humanitarian catastrophe or riots."