Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican health authorities announced almost 1,000 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease over the weekend – 518 on Saturday and 434 on Sunday.
There were two more Covid-19 deaths on Saturday, a 63 year old man in Maputo, and a 66 year old woman in Niassa. On Sunday, one more death was reported – that of a 43 year old woman in Maputo. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 868.
Since the start of the pandemic, 590,440 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 3,900 of them over the weekend. 2,948 of the tests gave negative results, and 952 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 75,138.
As has become the norm in recent days, the bulk of the new cases diagnosed on Saturday and Sunday came from Maputo city (396), Maputo province (204) and Tete (157). These three provinces accounted for 79.5 per cent of all the weekend’s cases.
There were also 89 cases from Inhambane, 35 from Sofala, 24 from Manica, 21 from Gaza, 12 from Niassa, ten from Zambezia, and four from Cabo Delgado. No cases at all were reported from Nampula.
The positivity rate (the percentage of those tested who are found to be carrying the coronavirus) over the weekend was 24.4 per cent, which compares with 17.4 per cent on Friday, 22.7 per cent on Thursday, and 20.1 per cent on Wednesday.
But national averages can be misleading. In Mozambique, the Covid-19 situation is far worse in Maputo and Tete than anywhere else in the country. The weekend positivity rates were 35 per cent in Tete, 27.5 per cent in Maputo city, and 40 per cent in Maputo province. So in Maputo province four out of every ten people tested were infected.
But further north, the number of cases and so the positivity rate, remain very low. In Zambezia, for example, there were five cases on Saturday and five on Sunday, which gave a positivity rate of just under seven per cent.
Over the weekend, 43 more people were hospitalised in the Covid-19 wards. On Sunday, 143 people were under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres (up from 117 on Friday). 91 of these patients (63.6 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 21 in Tete, 12 in Sofala, 10 in Matola, three in Nampula, two in Zambezia, two in Manica, one in Niassa and one in Inhambane. There were no patients in the Covid-19 facilities in Cabo Delgado or Gaza.
The Ministry also reported that 510 people were declared full recovered from Covid-19 over the weekend (466 in Maputo city, 28 in Inhambane, 14 in Maputo province and two in Zambezia). The total number of recoveries now stands at 71,081, which is 94.6 per cent of all those diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 2,746 on Friday to 3,185 on Sunday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo City, 1,351 (42.4 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 666; Tete, 577; Sofala, 195; Inhambane, 122; Niassa, 86; Manica, 69; Nampula, 39; Gaza, 39; Cabo Delgado, 23; and Zambezia, 18.
