Africa-Press – Mozambique. According to the Mozambican health authorities, on Wednesday 32 deaths from the Covid-19 respiratory disease were reported, the largest death toll so far for a single 24 hour period.
17 of these latest victims were men and 24 were women. All were Mozambican citizens, and they were aged between 10 and 99. 20 of the deaths occurred in Maputo city, six in Maputo province, three in Inhambane and one each in Tete, Manica and Sofala,
This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,190. This month is the most lethal in the pandemic so far, with 312 deaths – 26.2 per cent of the entire death toll.
According to a Wednesday press release from the Ministry of Health, 1,704 new cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in the previous 24 hours. This number of new cases is second only to the 2,025 recorded last Saturday.
Since the start of the pandemic, 682,145 people have been tested for the coronavírus that causes Covid-19, 4,960 of them in the previous 24 hours. Well over half the samples tested – 2,687 (54.2 per cent) – were from Maputo city. There were also 436 tests from Inhambane, 376 from Maputo province, 346 from Tete, 299 from Sofala, 289 from Niassa, 235 from Nampula, 201 from Zambezia, 64 from Cabo Delgado, 14 from Manica and 13 from Gaza.
3,256 of the tests yielded negative results, and 1,704 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 103,713.
Most of the positive cases were from Maputo city (1,111) and Maputo province (161). Between them, Maputo city and province accounted for 74.6 per cent of Wednesday’s new cases. There were also 129 cases from Inhambane, 114 from Niassa, 73 from Tete, 54 from Sofala, 41 from Zambezia, 13 from Nampula, three from Manica, three from Cabo Delgado and two from Gaza.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Wednesday was 34.4 per cent: hence slightly more than a third of those tested were found to be carrying the virus. This compares with positivity rates of 32.9 per cent on Tuesday, 40.4 per cent on Monday, and 34.5 per cent on Sunday.
The province with the highest positivity rate on Wednesday was Maputo province, with 42.8 per cent, followed by Maputo city (41.3 per cent), Niassa (39.4 per cent), and Inhambane (29.6 per cent), Once again the lowest positivity rates were found in the northern provinces of Nampula (5.5 per cent) and Cabo Delgado (4.6 per cent),
Over the same 24 hour period, 53 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospitals (32 in Maputo, five in Manica, four in Tete, three in Inhambane, three in Matola, and two each in Zambezia, Sofala and Gaza), At the same time, 53 new patients were admitted (20 in Maputo, eight in Inhambane, six in Matola, six in Tete, five in Manica, two in Sofala, one in Niassa and one in Zambezia).
Because of the large number of deaths, the number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 497 on Tuesday to 494 on Wednesday. The great majority of these – 345 (69.8 per cent) – were in Maputo. There were also 44 in Matola, 38 in Sofala, 21 in Tete, 13 in Manica, 13 in Inhambane, six in Gaza, six in Zambezia, five in Niassa, and three in Nampula. Cabo Delgado remained the only province where no Covid-19 patients were hospitalised.
In some provinces, there is a critical shortage of appropriate beds for Covid-19 patients. The problem is acute in Matola, which has only 40 beds, but 44 Covid-19 patients.
The Ministry release also reported that on Wednesday, 1,721people were declared to have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (1,157 in Maputo city, 364 in Gaza, 111 in Niassa, 58 in Sofala, and 31 in Zambezia). This is the largest number of recoveries in a single 24 hour period so far. The number of recoveries stands at 80,058, which is 77.2 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
Thanks mainly to the large number of recoveries, the number of active Covid-19 cases fell from 22,510 on Tuesday to 22,461 on Wednesday. The geographical breakdown of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 13,605 (60.6 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 3,753; Tete, 1,736; Inhambane, 1,096; Manica, 846; Niassa, 460; Sofala, 443; Zambezia, 187; Nampula, 177; Gaza, 108; and Cabo Delgado, 50.
