Africa-Press – Mozambique. Covid-19 inpatient capacity at hospitals in Maputo province, Mozambique, is now exhausted and authorities are resorting to health units in the city of Maputo to meet demand, an official source told Lusa today. [Maputo Province has four municipalities: Boane, Manhiça, Matola and Namaacha].
“Maputo province has exceeded its installed [hospital] capacity, now having 42 beds occupied, when 40 beds were allocated [for Covid-19 patients],” Deputy Director of Public Health Benigna Matsinhe reports.
Health units in Maputo province are now sending seriously ill Covid-19 patients to hospitals in Maputo city, she added.
“At this moment, the city of Maputo has 334 beds occupied, out of a total of 583 (57%),” Matsinhe observed.
In the first 19 days of July, when the third wave of the pandemic began in Mozambique, the country registered 24,381 new Covid-19 cases, 1,132 hospital admissions and 260 deaths, against 9,628 new cases, 419 hospital admissions and 87 deaths registered at the beginning of the second wave.
“We emphasise that we need strong collective action to stop the current spread of the pandemic in the country. Although the numbers are already bad, we could see a more serious situation in August,” Matsinhe added.
Since the announcement of the first case in March last year, Mozambique has had a total of 1,138 deaths from Covid-19 among its 100,785 infections, 76% of whom have been recovered, according to the latest updates.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused at least 4,093,263 deaths worldwide, among more than 190.3 million cases of infection by the new coronavirus, according to the most recent Agence France-Presse tally.
The respiratory disease is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, detected in late 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, with variants currently identified in countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, India, South Africa, Brazil and Peru.
