Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican Health Ministry on Monday warned that there are just two days to go before the end of the current phase of the national vaccination campaign against Covid-19, in which all those who have received one dose of the Chinese VeroCell vaccine should receive the second dose.
In its daily press release on the Covid-19 situation, the Ministry urged “all those who have not yet received the second dose, but who are within the deadline indicated on their vaccination cards, to head to the same vaccination posts where they received the first dose”.
Vaccination, it stressed, is important in the fight against Covid-19 “in preventing deaths and the most serious forms of the disease, and so those who have not yet taken the second dose should do so for their own good and for the collective good”.
So far, 762,370 people have received the second dose of the Vero-Cell vaccine, which is 67.8 per cent of the 1,124,706 who took the first dose.
Over the previous 24 hours only 30,422 people were vaccinated. At this rate, it will be quite impossible to meet the target of over 1.1 million people by Thursday,
Looking at the entire vaccination campaign, which began on 8 March, the Ministry said 1,418,999 people have been fully vaccinated, which is 8.3 per cent of the 17 million people whom the government hopes to vaccinate. Most of the vaccines administered have been Vero-Cell and Covishield (the Indian manufactured version of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine), which both require two doses. A small minority have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which is taken in just one dose.
The Ministry reported that, since the start of the pandemic, 865,205 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 1,243 of them in the previous 24 hours. 1,112 of these tests yielded negative results, while 131 tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 148,054.
Of the 131 cases identified on Monday, 79 were women or girls, and 52 were men or boys. 22 were children under the age of 15, and five were over 65 years old. For seven cases, no age information was available.
95 of the positive cases (72.5 per cent) came from the north – 43 from Nampula, 35 from Niassa and 17 from Cabo Delgado. The dominance of the provinces north of the Zambezi would have been even clearer had Zambezia been included – but no tests were reported from Zambezia on Monday.
The seven southern and central provinces provided 36 cases (27.5 per cent) – 15 from Gaza, 10 from Maputo city, 10 from Maputo province and one from Sofala. No positive cases were diagnosed in Inhambane, Manica or Tete.
The positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be carrying the coronavirus) on Monday was 10.5 per cent. The rates over the previous few days were 10.1 per cent on Sunday, 11.6 per cent on Saturday, 11.3 per cent on Friday, and 13.3 per cent on Thursday. This is a far cry from the situation in July, when the daily positivity rate often exceeded 30 per cent.
The provinces with the highest positivity rates on Monday were Cabo Delgado (28.8 per cent), Maputo province (27.8 per cent), and Niassa (25.4 per cent).
In the same 24 hour period, 12 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (five in Maputo, two each in Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Zambezia, and one in Sofala), and ten new cases were admitted (four in Maputo, three in Cabo Delgado, two in Niassa and one in Matola)
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment facilities fell from 112 on Sunday to 107 on Monday. 49 of these patients (45.8 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 19 patients in Niassa, 16 in Nampula, five in Zambezia, four in Cabo Delgado, four in Inhambane, three in Matola, two each in Manica, Sofala and Gaza, and one in Tete.
Of the 107 hospitalised, 66 were men and 41 were women. 47 were 60 or more years old, and 33 were in the 45-59 year age group. The Ministry release described the clinical condition of 32 as “moderate”. 65 are seriously ill, while ten are in intensive care, in a critical state.
The Ministry reported three Covid-19 deaths on Monday. All were Mozambican women aged 72, 74 and 76, and all died in Maputo city. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,881.
Over the previous 24 hours, 557 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (406 in Nampula, 73 in Zambezia, 60 in Inhambane and 18 in Manica). The total number of recoveries now stands at 137,891, or 93.1 per cent of all Covid-19 cases ever diagnosed in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases fell from 8.707 on Sunday to 8.278 on Monday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 2,506 (30.3 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 1,886; Nampula, 1,388; Niassa, 637; Inhambane, 601; Cabo Delgado, 564; Gaza, 343; Zambezia, 287; Tete, 40; Manica, 23; and Sofala, three.
