Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican authorities reported on Saturday that, for the fifth time in July, the number of new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease exceeded 2,000.
According to a Health Ministry press release, there were 2.078 new cases on Saturday. The days with the highest number of cases have been:
28 July 2,460
30 July 2,290
22 July 2,123
31 July 2,078
17 July 2,025
The Ministry also reported a further 27 Covid-19 deaths. These victims were 16 men and 11 women, all Mozambican nationals, and aged between 26 and 85. 20 of them died in Maputo city, three in Maputo province and one each in Niassa, Nampula, Sofala and Gaza.
This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,434. Of these deaths, 556 (38.8 per cent) occurred in July, making July 2021 by far the deadliest month in the Mozambican Covid-19 epidemic.
Since the start of the pandemic, 738,694 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 6,263 of them in the previous 24 hours.
4,185 of the tests gave negative results while 2,078 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 122,028. Of the positive cases identified on Saturday, 1,116 were women or girls, and 962 were men or boys. 225 were children under the age of 15 and 120 were over 65 years old. For 31 cases, no age information was available.
Just over 49 per cent of the new cases came from the far south, 681 from Maputo city and 348 from Maputo province. There were also 277 cases from Inhambane, 227 from Gaza, 188 from Manica, 174 from Sofala, 74 from Zambezia, 59 from Niassa, 21 from Tete, 19 from Cabo Delgado and 10 from Nampula.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Saturday was 33.2 per cent – so almost exactly a third of those tested were found to be carrying the virus. This is similar to the rates found earlier in the week – 32.4 per cent on Friday, 32.7 per cent on Thursday, 35.3 per cent on Wednesday and 30.1 per cent on Tuesday.
The provinces with the highest positivity rates were Maputo province (48.2 per cent), Manica (41 per cent), Gaza (39 per cent), Inhambane (38.2 per cent), and Maputo city (33.3 per cent). The only province with a positivity rate lower than 20 per cent was Cabo Delgado, in the far north, with 4.7 per cent.
In the same 24 hour period, 15 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (five in Maputo, three in Matola, two in Manica, two in Inhambane and one each in Niassa, Zambezia and Sofala). At the same time, 53 new patients were admitted (39 in Maputo, six in Matola, five in Manica. two in Inhambane and one in Nampula).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment facilities rose from 493 on Friday to 504 on Saturday. The great majority of these patients – 345 (68.5 per cent) – were in Maputo. There were also 54 patients in Matola, 31 in Sofala, 18 in Inhambane, 17 in Manica, 10 in Zambezia, 10 in Gaza, nine in Niassa, seven in Tete and three in Nampula. Throughout the month, Cabo Delgado has been the only province where no Covid-19 patients have been hospitalised.
The Ministry release also reported that on Saturday 299 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (261 in Inhambane and 38 in Zambezia), The total number of recoveries now stands at 88,370, which is 74.2 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active Covid-19 cases continues to rise remorselessly – from 30,458 on Friday to 32,210 on Saturday. The geographical breakdown of these cases was a follows: Maputo city, 19,569 (60.8 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 5,442; Inhambane 1,934; Niassa, 1,282; Sofala, 1,132; Manica, 952; Gaza, 817; Zambezia, 368; Tete, 364; Nampula, 250; Cabo Delgado, 100.
