Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican health authorities on Monday reported just ten new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease – the lowest number of cases in a single 24 hour period since 31 May 2020, when five cases were reported.
According to a Monday press release from the Ministry of Health, since the start of the pandemic, 900,559 people have been tested for the coronavírus that causes Covid-19, 479 pf them in the previous 24 hours. 469 of these tests yielded negative results, and ten people tested positive for the virus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 150,540.
All the new cases reported on Monday were Mozambican citizens. Five were men and five were women.
Five of the cases were from Inhambane, two were from Nampula and there was one each from Niassa, Tete and Maputo province. No positive cases at all were reported from any of the other six provinces.
The positivity rate (the percentage of those tested found to be carrying the coronavirus) on Monday was 2.1 per cent, the lowest so far this month. The positivity rates over the past week were:
Sunday 26 September 5.2 per cent
Saturday 25 September 2.9 per cent
Friday 24 September 3.5 per cent
Thursday 23 September five per cent
Wednesday 22 September five per cent
Tuesday 21 September eight per cent
Monday 20 September 5.9 per cent.
In the same 24 hour period, five Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (two in Maputo, and one each in Gaza, Niassa and Tete), and six new cases were admitted (three in Nampula, two in Maputo and one in Inhambane).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres remained 38, unchanged from Sunday’s figure. 17 of these patients (44.7 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 14 patients in Nampula, three in Inhambane, two in Niassa and two in Zambezia.
25 of the hospitalised patients are men and 13 are women, said the Ministry release, 22 are 60 or more years old. The Ministry described the clinical condition of 15 as “moderate”. 23 are seriously ill, but none are in a critical state. 31 patients are receiving supplementary oxygen.
The Ministry reported one more Covid-19 death. He was an 88 year old Mozambican man who died in Niassa. The total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique now stands at 1,910.
In the same 24 hour period, 44 people were declared to have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (15 in Zambezia, 15 in Manica, 10 in Inhambane and four in Tete). The total number of recoveries is now 146,588, or 97.4 per cent of all those diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases fell from 2,073 on Sunday to 2,038 on Monday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 790 (38.8 per cent of the total); Nampula, 575; Maputo province, 306; Cabo Delgado, 209; Inhambane, 46; Gaza, 37; Zambezia, 28; Niassa, 24; Sofala, 14; Manica, five; and Tete, four.
The Ministry warned that living in what is described as “the new normal” means that, “even with a favourable Covid-19 situation, we must continue, as a matter of routine, all the habits and behavior we have adopted since the outbreak of the pandemic, particularly the use of masks whenever we are in contact with other people or in public places, regular washing of hands and physical distancing”.
