COVID-19 pandemic in Lesotho


The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached Lesotho on 13 May 2020.
Prior to this, Lesotho was the last country in Africa to have no reported COVID-19 cases during the global pandemic.
The country did not have the ability to test for the virus, and so, in order to prevent the spread of the virus the government closed its border with South Africa. On 18 March, the government declared a national emergency despite having no confirmed cases, and closed schools until 17 April, but allowed school meals to continue. Arriving travellers were to be quarantined for 14 days upon arrival. Prime Minister Thomas Thabane announced a three-week lock down from midnight 29 March. Lesotho began sending its samples to South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases for testing.

Timeline

May 2020

Lesotho began lifting some aspects of the lockdown from 5 May.
Lesotho confirmed its first case on 13 May and its second case on 22 May.
At the end of May, one of the two confirmed cases was still active.

June 2020

Two additional cases were reported on the 3 June. Both had travelled from Cape Town.
On 22 June, eight additional cases were reported, seven of whom had travelled from South Africa, and one from Zimbabwe.
During June there were 25 confirmed cases, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 27. Three patients recovered in June, raising the total number of recovered patients to 4. The remaining 23 cases were still active at the end of June. Model-based simulations indicate that the 95% confidence interval for the time-varying reproduction number R t has been stable above 1.0 since early June.

July 2020

The country recorded its first death on 9 July, by which time confirmed cases had climbed to 134. By the end of the month the number of confirmed cases had climbed to 604 and the death toll to 13. The number of recovered patients increased to 144, leaving 447 active cases at the end of the month.