Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican health authorities reported that on Saturday a further 25 people died of the Covid-19 respiratory disease, and 1,451 new cases of the disease were diagnosed.
According to a Ministry of Health press release, 24 of the latest victims were Mozambicans and one was a foreigner (the Ministry did not reveal his or her nationality). 18 were men and seven were women, and they were aged between 26 and 81. 15 died in Maputo, three in Sofala, two in Matola, two in Niassa, and one each in Zambezia, Tete and Inhambane,
This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,257. Of these deaths, 379 (30.2 per cent) took place this month.
Since the start of the pandemic, 698,681 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 5,072 of them in the previous 24 hours. There were 2,590 tests in Maputo city and 489 in Maputo province. So between them, Maputo city and province accounted for 60.7 per cent of Saturday’s tests.
There were also 440 tests from Inhambane, 315 from Sofala, 312 from Tete, 223 from Nampula, 222 from Cabo Delgado, 221 from Zambezia, 183 from Gaza, 74 from Gaza and three from Niassa.
3,621 of the tests gave negative results, and 1,451 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 108,760. Of the new cases, 1,420 were Mozambican citizens and 31 were foreigners.
766 were women or girls and 685 were men or boys. 132 were children under the age of 15 and 70 were over 65 years old. In 25 cases, no age information was available.
One again, Maputo accounted for the majority – 75 per cent – of the new cases, 875 in Maputo city and 214 in Maputo province. There were also 131 positive cases from Inhambane, 56 from Sofala, 46 from Tete, 40 from Zambezia, 35 from Gaza, 28 from Manica, 19 from Nampula, five from Cabo Delgado and two from Niassa.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Saturday was 28.6 per cent, the same as on Friday.
As for the breakdown by province, technically Niassa had the highest positivity rate, of 66.7 per cent. But there were only three tests in Niassa, two of which were positive. Among the provinces with a reasonably large sample, the highest rates were in Maputo province (45.8 per cent), Manica (37.8 per cent), Maputo city 33.8 per cent), Inhambane (29.8 per cent), and Gaza (19.1 per cent). Once again the lowest positivity rates were from the two northern provinces of Nampula (8.5 per cent) and Cabo Delgado (2.3 per cent).
Over the same 24 hour period, 43 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (28 in Maputo, five in Matola, three in Gaza, two each in Manica, Sofala and Inhambane and one in Nampula), but 62 new patients were admitted (34 in Maputo, 13 in Matola, five in Niassa, three in Tete, two each in Sofala, Inhambane and Gaza, and one in Nampula).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 511 on Friday to 505 on Saturday. The great majority – 347 (68.7 per cent) of these patients were in Maputo. There were also 53 in Matola, 35 in Sofala, 19 in Tete, 13 in Inhambane, 10 in Niassa, 10 in Zambezia, eight in Manica, seven in Gaza, and three in Nampula. Cabo Delgado remained the only province where no Covid-19 patients were hospitalised.
The Ministry release added that a further 316 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 on Saturday (183 in Maputo province and 133 in Inhambane). The total number of recoveries now stands at 82,616, which is 76 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 23,774 on Friday to 24,884 on Saturday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo city, 16.159 (64.9 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 3,972; Inhambane, 1.134; Manica, 822; Tete, 750; Sofala, 705; Niassa, 561; Gaza, 273; Zambezia, 259; Nampula, 187, and Cabo Delgado, 62.
