Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican health authorities on Friday reported a further 534 cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease – the largest number of cases reported in a single 24 hour period since 6 March, when 602 cases were reported.
Other key Covid-19 indicators are rising – such as the positivity rate (the percentage of people tested who are found to be infected), the number of people hospitalised with the disease, and the number of active cases.
According to a Friday Ministry of Health press release, since the start of the pandemic, 586,540 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 3,063 of them in the previous 24 hours. This is the largest number of tests in a single day so far this month.
The majority of the samples tested came from the far south – 935 from Maputo city and 530 from Maputo province, accounting for 47.8 per cent of the tests. There were also 370 tests from Zambezia. 270 from Sofala, 241 from Cabo Delgado, 226 from Tete, 170 from Nampula, 147 from Inhambane, 112 from Niassa, 61 from Manica and one from Gaza.
2,529 of the tests yielded negative results, while 534 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the number of cases of Covid-19 diagnosed in Mozambique to 74,186. Of the new cases reported on Friday, 506 are Mozambican citizens, three are known to be foreigners (but the Ministry release did not give their nationalities), and the nationalities of the remaining 25 have yet to be confirmed.
286 are men or boys and 248 are women or girls. 71 are children under the age of 15, and 34 are over 65 years old. For 13 cases, no age information was available.
The positive cases were concentrated in the known Covid-19 hotspots of Maputo and Tete – 176 in Maputo city, 147 in Maputo province and 114 in Tete. These three provinces accounted for 81.8 per cent of the positive cases reported on Friday.
There were also 59 cases in Sofala, 18 in Niassa, ten in Zambezia, and ten in Manica. None of the samples from Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Inhambane or Gaza tested positive for the coronavirus.
The national positivity rate found on Friday was 17.4 per cent – a decline from the 22.7 per cent reported on Thursday and the 20.1 per cent found on Wednesday.
But the national average conceals enormous differences in the positivity rate between the provinces. The positivity rate in Tete on Friday reached 50.4 per cent – thus more than one in two of those tested in this province was carrying the coronavirus. Other provinces with rates above the national average were Maputo province (27.7 per cent), Sofala (21.8 per cent) and Maputo city (18.8 per cent).
Below the average were the rates for Manica (16.4 per cent), Niassa (16 per cent), and Zambezia (2.7 per cent). The four provinces – Cabo Delgado, Nampula, Gaza and Inhambane – which reported no positive cases on Friday, could have no positivity rates at all.
Over the same 24 hour period, two Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (one in Maputo and one in Sofala), but 18 new cases were admitted (14 in Maputo, three in Sofala and one in Matola).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres rose from 103 on Thursday to 117 on Friday. The great majority of these patients – 77 (65.8 per cent) – were in Maputo. There were also 16 cases in Tete, 11 in Sofala, five in Matola, three in Niassa, three in Nampula, one in Manica and one in Inhambane.
The Ministry release also reported that on Friday 219 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (215 in Tete and four in Gaza). This brings the total number of recoveries to 70,571, or 95.1 per cent of all those diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The Ministry reported two further deaths from Covid-19, a 44 year old woman and a 48 year old man, both Mozambican nationals. One died in Matola and one in Sofala. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll to 865.
The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 2,433 on Thursday to 2,746 on Friday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo city, 1,423 (51.8 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 476; Tete, 420; Sofala, 160; Niassa, 75; Inhambane, 61; Manica, 45; Nampula, 39; Cabo Delgado, 19; Gaza, 18; and Zambezia, ten.
