UPDATE: Africa's first Coronavirus patient tests negative for virus

The announcement was made by the Egyptian Health Ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, 19 February.

This is coming a week after Egypt announced a foreign national had contracted the virus and then entered the country. The foreigner was put in isolation after the announcement was made.

Punch is reporting that the Egyptian health ministry and the World Health Organisation announced that repeated polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis, a test conducted on Coronavirus patients, returned negative results.

This does not mean that the patient has been released as they will still remain in quarantine for the next 14 days.

“He will remain in quarantine until the full 14-day period is over and will be undergoing further required tests to ensure he was fully recovered,” WHO spokeswoman Inas Hamam said in an email to Reuters.