Africa-Press – Mozambique. The number of people declared on Monday to have made a full recovery from the Covid-19 respiratory disease in Mozambique reached a record of 2,227, according to the Deputy National Director of Public Health, Benigna Matsinhe, addressing a Maputo press conference,
The bulk of the recoveries – 1,699 – were from Maputo city. There were also 371 recoveries from Tete, 120 from Gaza and 37 from Zambezia. The total number of recoveries now stands at 84,994, which is 76.1 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
Matsinhe reported that a further 25 people died of Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours. These latest victims were 14 men and 11 women, all Mozambican citizens, and aged between 37 and 99. 17 of these deaths occurred in Maputo, four in Matola, and one each in Niassa, Nampula, Tete and Sofala.
This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,307. Of these deaths, 429 (32.8 per cent) occurred this month, making July 2021 the deadliest month in the pandemic so far.
Since the start of the pandemic, 707,311 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 4,150 of them in the previous 24 hours. Slightly more than 50 per cent of the samples tested came from Maputo city (1,581) and Maputo province (498). There were also 474 tests from Inhambane, 467 from Niassa, 335 from Nampula, 323 from Gaza, 308 from Sofala, 79 from Cabo Delgado, 39 from Tete, 29 from Zambezia and 17 from Manica.
2,715 of the tests yielded negative results, and 1,435 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 111,723.
762 of the new cases were women or girls, and 673 were men or boys. 128 were children under the age of 15, and 74 were over 65 years old. In 43 cases, no age information was available.
622 of the positive cases were from Maputo city and 209 were from Maputo province. Thus Maputo city and province remain at the heart of the Mozambican epidemic, accounting for 57.9 per cent of the new cases diagnosed on Monday. There were also 187 cases from Niassa, 185 from Inhambane, 136 from Gaza, 49 from Sofala,18 from Nampula, 11 from Tete, 10 from Manica, six from Zambezia and two from Cabo Delgado.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Monday was 34.6 per cent, much the same as Sunday’s rate of 34.1 per cent, and considerably higher than the rate of 28.6 per cent found on both Friday and Saturday.
The province with the highest positivity rate was Manica with 58.8 per cent (but on a rather small sample of 17 tests, seven of which were positive).The other provinces with high positivity rates were Gaza (42.1 per cent), Maputo province (40.2 per cent), Niassa (40 per cent), Maputo city (39.3 per cent), and Inhambane (39 per cent), Once again, the lowest rates were from the northern provinces of Nampula (5.4 per cent) and Cabo Delgado (2.5 per cent).
Over the same 24 hour period, 31 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (24 in Maputo, three in Manica, and one each in Niassa, Tete, Sofala and Gaza), and 39 new cases were admitted (29 in Maputo, four in Niassa, three in Sofala, two in Manica and one in Zambezia).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment facilities fell from 475 on Sunday to 458 on Monday. The great majority of these patients – 318 (69.4 per cent) – were in Maputo. There were also 45 patients in Matola, 29 in Sofala, 17 in Tete, 14 in Inhambane, 12 in Niassa, 12 in Zambezia, five in Gaza, four in Manica and two in Nampula. Cabo Delgado remains the only province where no Covid-19 patients are hospitalised.
Matsinhe said that 292 of those hospitalised are men and 166 are women. 169 (36.9 per cent) are aged 60 and above, and 153 (33.4 per cent) are in the 45-59 age bracket. She described the clinical condition of 145 as “moderate”, but 291 are seriously ill and 22 are in a critical state, in intensive care units. 398 are receiving supplementary oxygen.
Because of the large number of recoveries reported on Monday, the number of Covid-19 active cases fell from 26,236 on Sunday to 25,419 on Monday. The geographical distribution of these cases was Maputo city, 15,678 (61.7 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 4,393; Inhambane, 1,669; Manica, 837; Niassa, 831; Sofala, 726; Tete, 418; Gaza, 406; Nampula, 237; Zambezia, 179; and Cabo Delgado,45.
Matsinhe called on all those eligible for Covid-19 vaccination to make their way to the vaccination centres in the coming days. Vaccination would be a contribution “towards blocking the spread of Covid-19, with an impact on reducing the number of new cases, hospitalisations and deaths”.
To date, 111,723 people in Mozambique had been diagnosed with Covid-19, and 5,412 of them had been hospitalised. “This means that five per cent of infected people develop such serious forms of the disease that they have to be hospitalised”, said Matsinhe.
Mozambique received an additional 302,400 doses of vaccine on Monday, and a further million doses are expected to arrive on Tuesday. Matsinhe said the main target group for the new phase of vaccination is people aged over 50, who were not reached in the earlier phases.
