Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican health authorities on Friday reported 2,290 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease, and 19 deaths.
This was the second highest number of cases reported in a single 24 hour period since the start of the pandemic, exceeded only by the 2,460 cases reported on Wednesday.
There have been two other days when the number of new cases exceeded 2,000 – 22 July (with 2.123 cases) and 17 July (2,025 cases). Thus the four days with the highest number of cases all occurred within the past fortnight.
The latest deaths were 11 men and eight women, all Mozambican citizens, and aged between 14 and 87. 13 of them died in Maputo, two in Matola and one each in Niassa, Tete, Sofala and Inhambane.
This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,407. Of these deaths, 529 (37.6 per cent) occurred this month.
According to a Friday press release from the Ministry of Health, to date 732,431 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 7,068 of them in the previous 24 hours. 4,778 of these tests gave negative results, and 2,290 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 119,950.
Of the new cases diagnosed on Friday, 1,239 were women or girls and 1.051 were men or boys. 222 were children under 15 years of age, and 97 were over 65 years old. In 41 cases, no age information was available.
The figures indicate that Maputo remains the worst Covid-19 hotspot in the country. 737 of the new cases were from Maputo city and 422 from Maputo province. Between them Maputo city and province accounted for 50.6 per cent of the cases identified on Friday. There were also 333 positive cases from Inhambane, 228 from Sofala, 192 from Gaza, 152 from Manica, 116 from Niassa, 44 from Tete, 42 from Zambezia, 15 from Nampula and nine from Cabo Delgado.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Friday was 32.4 per cent. The rates earlier in the week were:
Thursday 32.7 per cent
Wednesday 35.3 per cent
Tuesday 30.1 per cent
Monday 34.6 per cent
Sunday 34.1 per cent
Thus over the past week about a third of all those tested were found to be carrying the coronavirus.
Major differences continue to exist between the provinces. The provinces with the highest positivity rates on Friday were Maputo province (46.9 per cent), Inhambane (39.4 per cent), Sofala (35.2 per cent), Niassa (34.8 per cent), and Maputo city (33.9 per cent). The lowest rates were in the northern provinces of Nampula (6.7 per cent) and Cabo Delgado (3.7 per cent).
In the same 24 hour period, 47 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (30 in Maputo, eight in Niassa, three in Matola, two in Gaza, two in Manica and one each in Zambezia and Tete). But 58 new cases entered the Covid-19 wards (35 in Maputo, seven in Matola, four in Inhambane, three each in Niassa, Manica and Gaza, two in Sofala and one in Zambezia).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment facilities fell from 501 on Thursday to 493 on Friday. The majority of these patients – 331 (67.1 per cent) –were in Maputo. There were also 54 patients in Matola, 33 in Sofala, 18 in Inhambane, 14 in Manica, 11 each in Niassa, Zambezia and Gaza, seven in Tete, and three in Nampula. Cabo Delgado remained the only province where no Covid-19 patients were hospitalised.
The Ministry release also reported that on Friday 825 people were declared to have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (338 in Gaza, 237 in Manica, 191 in Maputo province, 38 in Nampula and 21 in Zambezia). The total number of recoveries now stands at 88,081, which is 74.2 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of new cases continues to outstrip the number of recoveries, and so the number of active Covid-19 cases in the country rose from 29,012 on Thursday to 30,458 on Friday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 18,908 (62.1 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 5,097; Inhambane, 1.918; Niassa, 1,224; Sofala, 959; Manica, 764; Gaza, 591; Tete, 343; Zambezia, 332; Nampula, 241; and Cabo Delgado, 81.
