Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican health authorities on Tuesday announced 1,458 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease, making this Mozambique’s worst day so far, since the start of the pandemic.
Previously, the day with the largest number of infections was 29 January, with 1,275 cases. Tuesday’s cases bring the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in July to 5,942 – or an average of slightly more than 990 cases a day.
A Tuesday press release from the Health Ministry added that 11 Covid-19 deaths were recorded that day. Seven of them were men and four were women, and they were aged between 45 and 76. Ten of the victims were Mozambican citizens and one was a foreigner (the Ministry did not reveal his or her nationality). Six of them died in Maputo, two in Gaza, and one each in Niassa, Tete and Matola.
To date, 618,556 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 4,594 of them in the previous 24 hours. The Covid-19 hotspots of Maputo and Tete accounted for 59.4 per cent of the tests – 1,386 in Maputo city, 754 in Maputo province and 589 in Tete. There were also 463 tests in Gaza, 303 in Inhambane, 264 in Zambezia, 236 in Niassa, 199 in Cabo Delgado, 186 in Nampula, 127 in Sofala and 87 in Manica.
3,136 of the tests yielded negative results, and 1,458 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 82,346.
502 of the positive cases identified on Tuesday were from Maputo city, 393 from Maputo province, and 262 from Tete. Thus these three provinces accounted for 79.4 per cent of all the positive cases. There were also 128 cases from Gaza, 64 from Niassa, 58 from Inhambane, 38 from Manica, six from Sofala, five from Nampula, and two from Zambezia. Of the 199 people tested in Cabo Delgado, none were positive.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Tuesday was 31.7 per cent. This compares with rates of 29.6 per cent on Monday, 27 per cent on Sunday, 31.8 per cent on Saturday, and 23.3 per cent on Friday.
The province with the highest positivity rate was Maputo province (52.8 per cent), followed by Tete (44.5 per cent), Manica (43.7 per cent), and Maputo city (36.2 per cent).
The positivity rates north of the Zambezi remained low. Except for Niassa (on 27.1 per cent), they all had rates of less than five per cent – Nampula, 2.7 per cent, Zambezia,, 0.8 per cent, and Cabo Delgado, zero (since there were no positive cases at all in this province).
Over the same 24 hour period, 30 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (18 in Maputo, five in Sofala, three in Tete, two in Manica, one in Niassa and one in Inhambane. But 53 new cases were admitted (34 in Maputo, five in Matola, five in Sofala, four in Manica, three in Gaza, and two in Tete).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres rose from 242 on Monday to 251 on Tuesday. The great majority of these patients – 194 (77.3 per cent) – were in Maputo. There were also 21 in Tete, 20 in Sofala, six in Matola, four in Manica, two in Inhambane, and one each in Gaza, Niassa, Nampula and Zambezia. Cabo Delgado remained the only province where no Covid-19 patients were hospitalised.
The Ministry also reported that on Tuesday, 237 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (108 in Manica, 79 in Sofala and 50 in Maputo province). The total number of recoveries now stands at 72,404, which is 87.9 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases has continued to grow, rising from 7,805 on Monday to 9,015 on Tuesday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo city, 4,377 (48.6 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 1,503; Tete, 1,363; Sofala, 506; Manica, 402; Gaza, 320; Inhambane, 220; Niassa, 205; Nampula, 54; Zambezia, 40; and Cabo Delgado, 25.
