South Sudan has recorded its highest yet number of coronavirus cases pushing the number towards the 1,000-mark.

On Monday, the National Taskforce announced an additional 151 cases less than 48 hours after declaring 10 positive cases.

A day before, Incident Manager for COVID-19 at the Ministry of Health said 5,000 more samples are yet to be tested. 

The country is now leading Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Ethiopia, and the Central African Republic in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

The new cases were detected from 243 test results sampled within the last two days.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases to 806.

According to the Undersecretary in the Ministry of Health, the samples were collected in Juba through contact tracing and random tests.

“151 tested positive accounts for 62% of all the sample tested over the last 48 hours,” Dr. Makur Koriom spoke during a press briefing on Monday.

“This consists of contacts accounting for 43 of the positive results, screening among people selected and sample selected randomly throughout Juba are 38. Among people suspected of having COVID-19, 39 of them had tested positive,” he added.

Dr. Makur said 72% of the test subjects are men who turned positive.

“The males were 111 out of the 243 positive test results.”

South Sudan has surpassed the region in the number of confirmed cases, despite being the last to register its first COVID-19 patient in April.

Only Sudan, DR Congo and Kenya are leading with 3,976, and 2,297 and 1,286 respectively.

Dr. Makur advises South Sudanese to adhere to the guidelines put in place to curb the spread of the virus in the communities.

He admitted that the spike in cases is due to a weak healthcare system, unexposed to handling pandemics.

Recently, the First Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar said ignorance by the public and their denial of the existence of the virus is hindering efforts to curb the spread.