South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa was caught on video dancing maskless during a trip to Ghana, only days before he tested positive for Covid-19, as his country battles a wave of cases sparked by the Omicron variant.
The footage, circulating on Twitter, shows Ramaphosa, 69, forgoing a mask while dancing with a partner, as music plays, during his foreign trip last week, despite the spread of the virus back in his home country.
Ramaphosa’s office announced on Sunday that he had tested positive for Covid-19, and that he would temporarily delegate his responsibilities to the deputy president. The South African president, who is fully vaccinated, was tested after falling ill following a state memorial service over the weekend.
While recovering, Ramaphosa is self-isolating in Cape Town. He recently returned from a trip around multiple African countries, with some members of his delegation testing positive while visiting Nigeria.
On Sunday, South Africa reported more than 18,000 new daily infections, with 70 percent of them estimated to be from the Omicron strain of the virus, according to the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases. Since the start of the pandemic, the country has recorded more than 90,000 deaths from Covid-19.