ADDIS ABABA - A total of 3,731,343 COVID-19 cases have been reported on the African continent as of Saturday evening, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said.

Meanwhile, the death toll related to the pandemic in Africa rose to 97,870, the Africa CDC said, adding that the continent's fatality rate stood at 2.6 percent.

A total of 3,272,202 people infected with COVID-19 have recovered across the continent, the African Union (AU) Commission's healthcare agency said.

The Southern Africa region is the most affected area in terms of the number of positive cases, followed by the North Africa region, the agency said.

South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Ethiopia are the countries hardest hit by the pandemic in Africa, whose COVID-19 cases accounted for 67 percent of Africa's total cases, it said.

Among the five countries, South Africa has reported the highest COVID-19-inflicted death toll in Africa, at 47,670 as of Saturday, according to the agency.

The agency said Africa's number of confirmed cases accounted for about 3.5 percent of the global caseload, whereas its number of deaths represented 4 percent of the global total.

More African countries have reached a fatality rate higher than the global average of 2.2 percent, it said.

The AU has recently emphasized that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic "is not just a severe health emergency, it is also a grave economic and social crisis."