South Africa gets $750 million World Bank loan to bolster COVID recovery effort

FILE PHOTO: A woman wearing a protective face mask against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) sits next to her stall, as the new Omicron coronavirus variant spreads, at Tsomo, a town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, December 2, 2021. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

The World Bank has approved a loan of $750 million to South Africa linked to COVID-19, aiming to help protect the poor and support economic recovery from the pandemic, the National Treasury said on Friday.

The continent's second largest economy, South Africa has been hit hard by four waves of infection that killed close to 94,000 people and infected 3.5 million in Africa's worst caseload.