Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican Health Ministry has announced that the third phase of the national vaccination campaign against Covid-19, which should have ended on Wednesday, is being extended by a further fortnight to 16 November.
The official explanation given by the Ministry is that large crowds had gathered at some of the vaccination posts, putting pressure on the health professionals.
But in fact, television coverage showed that, while long queues built up at some vaccination posts, others were virtually empty.
By Wednesday, the figures were not encouraging – the number vaccinated in the third phase was much lower than expected, particularly in Maputo city, where only 32 per cent of the target had been reached.
The Ministry announced on Wednesday that, over the previous 24 hours, almost a quarter of a million people (247,037, to be exact) had been vaccinated, much better than in previous days. The lowest vaccination figure was in the capital – even though Maputo city is the only province where virtually everybody is in easy walking distance of a vaccination post.
Only 12,073 people were vaccinated in Maputo city. The highest figures came from the two most populous provinces, Nampula (41,669) and Zambezia (40,190), followed by Manica (23,858).
The number of people fully vaccinated has now reached 2,426,370, while 4,159,380 have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Speaking in Lichinga, capital of the northern province of Niassa, at the opening of a meeting of his Ministry’s Coordinating Council, Health Minister Armindo Tiago said that those fully vaccinated “are now protected against the worst forms of the disease and against death caused by Covid-19”.
He took the opportunity to call on all those who are eligible but have not yet been vaccinated to make their way to the nearest vaccination post as soon as possible.
The target groups in this phase are anyone aged between 30 and 49 in urban areas who has not yet been vaccinated, and individuals in the rural areas aged 50 and above.
Tiago warned that, although all the main Covid-19 indicators are currently improving, “this should not be confused with the end of the pandemic”, and the risk remained of a fourth wave of the disease.
The measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 must be kept in force, the Minister stressed, and the health service must prepared for a possible increase in the number of new cases of the disease, and of hospitalisations.
Among the preparations already being made, said Tiago, is an increase in hospitalisation capacity, particularly in Maputo. At the height of the third wave, the city came close to running out of beds and oxygen for Covid-19 patients.
He added that the laboratory diagnosis capacity is being boosted, as is the availability of personal protective equipment for staff dealing with cases of Covid-19.
Tiago added that the health service has been badly hit by the terrorist attacks in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. Terrorism, he said, “has resulted in the forced mobility of the affected population, in depriving them of health services, and in the destruction of health units”.
With the current improvement of the security situation in Cabo Delgado, “we must now concentrate part of our effort on guaranteeing the continuity of health care for the displaced people, and for those who have returned to their home areas, as well as establishing the conditions for the health units to resume functioning quickly. This will contribute to implementation of the Plan to Rebuild the Areas affected by Terrorism”.
According to a Wednesday press release from the Health Ministry, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 945,519 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes the disease, 1,456 of them in the previous 24 hours.
1,447 of these tests yielded negative results, while nine people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 151,325.
Of the cases identified on Wednesday, five were women and four were men. Two were children under the age of 15. Five of the new cases (55.6 per cent) were diagnosed in Maputo city, and one each in Maputo province, Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Zambezia.
The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the virus) on Wednesday was 0.6 per cent. This compares with 1.2 per cent on Tuesday, 2.5 per cent on Monday, 0.5 per cent on Sunday and 1.3 per cent on Saturday.
In the same 24 hour period, the Covid-19 situation in the hospitals remained stable. No Covid-19 patients were discharged, and no new cases were admitted. The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment facilities remained eight, the same as on Monday and Tuesday. All these patients were in Maputo.
No deaths from Covid-19 were reported on Wednesday. Thus the total death toll from Covid-19 in Mozambique remains 1,932.
The Ministry release added that, in the previous 24 hours, five people were declared to have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (four in Gaza and one in Tete). The total number of recoveries now stands at 149,253, or 98.6 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active cases of Covid-19 rose from 132 on Tuesday to 136 on Wednesday. The geographical breakdown of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 51 (37.5 per cent of the total); Cabo Delgado, 27; Niassa, 16; Inhambane, nine; Manica, eight; Maputo province, eight; Nampula, seven; Zambezia, seven; Gaza, two; and Tete, one. Sofala remained the only province where there were no active Covid-19 cases.
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