South Africa has surpassed Mexico and Chile with its number of confirmed coronavirus cases and now has the world’s sixth-highest caseload. That’s according to the health ministry and data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. South Africa’s 324,221 confirmed cases are more than half of those across the African continent.

The country’s health ministry says 4,669 people have died. South Africa’s Gauteng province, home of Johannesburg and the capital of Pretoria, has become the epicenter of the pandemic in Africa with more than 117,000 confirmed cases.

One-quarter of the country’s population lives in Gauteng, with many people living in densely populated areas. Bandile Masuku, the province’s top health official, says the crisis could “expose the gaps” in the health care system.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s economy is expected to shrink by 4.5% this year, the country’s finance minister said Thursday, although others say it will contract even more, as the effects of the coronavirus and a drought take a toll on the struggling southern African nation.

The projection by Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube is much less than the more than 10% decline forecast by the International Monetary Fund.

Tourism, one of Zimbabwe’s country’s biggest foreign currency earners, was worst affected by the pandemic that has stopped almost all visitors from Asia, Europe and North America, Ncube said to parliament.

Zimbabwe’s economy was already in the doldrums before the coronavirus, beset by rising inflation, the declining value of the local currency, high unemployment, and acute shortages of water, electricity and gas.

Inflation is more than 700%, the world’s second-highest after Venezuela. The value of Zimbabwe’s local currency has been quickly declining, eroding the worth of salaries and resulting in frequent strikes by government workers.