The Ethiopian parliament on Friday unanimously approved over $1.5 billion as supplementary budget to fight coronavirus pandemic in the country.
Minister of Finance Ahmed Shide told the MPs that more than $1,5 billion is required to deal with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and $884.3 million of the supplementary budget will be raised from external sources.
It is to be recalled that the Council of Ministers, in its 79th regular session last year approved a 871.5 million additional budget for this fiscal year.
The supplementary budget was approved as the country confirmed record 137 COVID -19 cases out of 5,015 samples tests over the last twenty four hours.
All the new cases are Ethiopians with age range from 4 to 75 years old, and 86 of them are male and the remaining 51 are female, the country’s Ministry of Health disclosed on Friday.
Among the total new cases, 109 are indentified from the capital Addis Ababa, and the other 17 from Amhara, 8 from Oromiya, 8 from Tigray 2 from Benshangul Gumuz and 1 from Afar regional states of the country.
One individual who was receiving treatment for other diseases has died from coronaviurs while his sample test was under diagnosis taking the death toll to 8 in the country.
The total number of confirmed cases in Ethiopia has increased to 968 out of more than 100,000 tests counts since March13, 2020.
MG/abj/APA