120 Algeria health workers have died from virus: ministry

A worker wearing a protective suit disinfects a bus station, following the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Algiers, Algeria March 16, 2020. [Ramzi Boudina, Reuters]

Algeria's frontline health workers have lost 120 colleagues to the novel coronavirus pandemic among more than 9,000 who have caught the disease, the health ministry said Monday.

"So far a total of 120 health staff have died and 9,146 others have been infected by the virus" in the North African country, said the spokesman of the government's coronavirus scientists' panel Djamel Fourar.