Africa-Press – Mozambique. There can no longer be any doubt – Mozambique is indeed in the grip of a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, declared the Director of Surveys of the National Health Institute (INS), Sergio Chicumbe, on Monday.
Speaking at a Maputo press conference Chicumbe said “We are already in the third wave. The situation is not good, and we must comply with preventive measures. We should be in isolation and avoid greater propagation of the virus. There should be general awareness that everything depends on us, for there is no doubt that we are in the third wave. We don’t need to make a formal announcement”.
Asked when the third wave would reach its peak, Chicumbe said it would not be prudent to make any forecasts. He noted that Mozambique is now facing the Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is much more transmissible than the original virus. Nonetheless, looking at the precedent of the first two waves, Chicumbe warned that the current high levels of cases and deaths could continue for another two or three months, unless drastic measures are taken.
The National Director of Public Health. Rosa Marlene, told the reporters that on Monday a further 737 cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed. Thus, in the first five days of July, 4,484 new cases of the disease were identified.
She added that in the same 24 hour period, eight people died of Covid-19 – five men and three women, all Mozambican citizens, and aged between 24 and 81. Five died in Maputo, one in Tete, one in Sofala and one in Gaza. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 912.
Since the start of the pandemic, 613.962 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 2,486 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 734 were from Maputo city, 275 from Gaza, 266 from Inhambane, 265 from Zambezia, 257 from Maputo province, 145 from Nampula, 134 from Manica, 132 from Sofala, 118 from Niassa, 97 from Cabo Delgado and 63 from Tete.
1,749 of the tests gave negative results, and 737 were positive for the coronavirus. Thus brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 80,888.
Of the new cases diagnosed on Monday, 350 were from Maputo city, and 125 were from Maputo province. Thus Maputo city and province accounted for 64.5 per cent of the Monday cases. There were also 80 cases from Manica, 66 from Inhambane, 47 from Gaza, 26 from Niassa, 17 from Tete, 16 from Zambezia, seven from Sofala and three from Nampula. Not one of the 97 tests in Cabo Delgado was positive.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Monday was 29.6 per cent – this compares with 27 per cent on Sunday, 31.8 per cent on Saturday, 23.3 per cent on Friday, and 27.9 per cent on Thursday.
Among the provinces, the highest positivity was in Manica, where 59.7 per cent of those tested were infected, followed by Maputo province (48.6 per cent), Maputo city (47.7 per cent), and Tete (28.9 per cent).
Once again, the provinces north of the Zambezi showed relatively low positivity rates 22 per cent in Niassa, but only six per cent in Zambezia, 2.1 per cent in Nampula, and zero in Cabo Delgado (since no positive cases at all were diagnosed in this province).
Over the same period, 22 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (14 in Maputo, five in Tete, two in Zambezia and one in Sofala. But 45 new cases were admitted (32 in Maputo, nine in Tete, and four in Sofala),
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres rose from 228 on Sunday to 242 on Monday. Marlene said that 169 of these patients are men and 73 are women. 90 are over 60 years old, and 72 are aged between 45 and 59.
Marlene described the clinical state of 117 as “moderate”, but 109 are seriously ill and 16 are in a critical condition, in intensive care units.
Asked if the country is in any danger of running out of beds for Covid-19 patients, Marlene said that currently 1,136 beds are available. But they are unevenly distributed – 346 are in Maputo, 184 in Nampula, 162 in Cabo Delgado, 161 in Zambezia, and 104 in Tete, with smaller numbers in the other provinces.
Currently, there is just one Covid-19 patient in Nampula, one in Zambezia, and none at all in Cabo Delgado. 185 (76.4 per cent) of the patients are in Maputo, 24 in Tete, 20 in Sofala, three each in Niassa, Matola and Inhambane, and two in Manica.
Marlene also reported one item of good news – on Monday, 533 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (427 in Tete, 55 in Inhambane, 28 in Maputo province, and 15 in Zambezia, and eight in Cabo Delgado). This brings the total number of recoveries to 72,167, which is 89.2 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
But the number of new cases has continued to outstrip the number of recoveries, and so the number of active cases continues to grow, rising from 7,609 on Sunday to 7,805 on Monday. The geographical distribution of these cases was: Maputo city, 3,881 (49.7 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 1,161; Tete, 1,102; Sofala, 579; Manica, 472; Gaza, 194; Inhambane, 162; Niassa, 142; Nampula, 49; Zambezia, 38; and Cabo Delgado, 25.
