Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican Health Ministry announced on Friday that people who have received the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19 should, as from next Tuesday, go to the nearest vaccination post to receive their second and final dose.
This should cover 72,277 people in Maputo city, and in Nampula, Tete, Manica, Gaza and Maputo provinces.
This is the end of phase two of the national vaccination campaign. The Ministry announced that it will run from 5 to 19 October. It urged all those who have received the first AstraZeneca dose “to go to the vaccination posts in accordance with the date on your vaccination cards, to complete your vaccination, and reduce the possibility of falling seriously ill, or dying, because of Covid-19”.
The Ministry announced that the third phase of the national vaccination campaign will begin on 20 October, covering both urban and rural areas. The target is to vaccinate seven million people.
To date, over a million people have been vaccinated – which is more than ten per cent of the 17 million people the Ministry hopes to vaccinate.
According to the latest Ministry press release on the state of the pandemic, the positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the coronavirus that causes Covid-19) fell to 2.2 per cent on Friday. This compares with 3.5 per cent on Thursday, 4.1 per cent on Wednesday, 2.4 per cent on Tuesday and 2.1 per cent on Monday. The last time the positivity rate went above five per cent was on 21 September, when it reached eight per cent.
Since the start of the pandemic, 907,502 people have been tested for the virus, 1,655 of them in the previous 24 hours. 1,619 of the tests yielded negative results, while 36 people tested positive. This brings the total number of cases of Covid-19 diagnosed in Mozambique to 150,759.
19 of the new cases identified on Friday (52.8 per cent) were from the northern province of Cabo Delgado. In no other province did the number of positive cases reach double figures. There were six cases in Nampula, four in Niassa, two in Inhambane, two in Maputo city, and one each in Zambezia, Manica and Gaza. No positive cases were reported from Maputo province, Tete or Sofala.
Over the same 24 hour period, four Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (two in Maputo, one in Nampula and one in Cabo Delgado), and four new cases were admitted (two in Niassa, one in Inhambane and one in Maputo).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment facilities fell from 25 on Thursday to 24 on Friday. 11 of these patients (45.8 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also four patients in Nampula, four in Niassa, two in Inhambane, and one each in Cabo Delgado, Zambezia and Gaza. No Covid-19 patients were hospitalised in the other four provinces.
The Ministry reported one more death from Covid-19, a 75 year old Mozambican man who died in Nampula. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,918.
The Ministry release said that 312 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 on Friday (173 in Maputo city, 77 in Maputo province, 61 in Nampula and one in Zambezia). The total number of recoveries now stands at 147,281, or 97.7 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases fell from 1,833 on Thursday to 1,556 on Friday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 637 (40.9 per cent of the total); Nampula, 360; Cabo Delgado, 190; Maputo province, 124; Niassa, 93; Inhambane, 59; Gaza, 45; Zambezia, 22; Sofala, 16; Manica, six; and Tete, four.
