Just in: 72 hours without any new coronavirus cases in Mozambique

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Just in: 72 hours without any new coronavirus cases in Mozambique

5:18 CAT | 29 Apr 2020

In the past 24 hours, the number of people infected with Coronavirus has not increased in the country. Thus, according to the Ministry of Health, the number of 76 infected remains, O País online has just reported.

Please, see below a screenshot of the webpage of the National Institute of Health, with the updates from 5h10m p.m. on Wednesday, April 29.

Meanwhile, no new cases of the coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease Covid-19 were diagnosed in Mozambique on Tuesday either, and hence the country has gone for 48 hours without any further cases.

Speaking on Tuesday, at the Ministry of Health’s daily press conference on Covid-19, the National Director of Public Health, Rosa Marlene, said that to date 1,772 suspect cases had been tested, 84 of them in the previous 24 hours. All 84 tested negative for Covid-19.

31 of these samples came from Maputo city, 52 from Maputo province and one from Gaza. Thus there were none from the northern province of Cabo Delgado, where the largest cluster of Covid-19 cases has been diagnosed, at the camp of the French oil and gas company Total, on the Afungi Peninsula.

Sergio Chicumbe, the national director of the Health Observatory of the National Health Institute (INS), told the press conference that 80 samples from Cabo Delgado were received on Tuesday afternoon, and the results from testing them could be known on Wednesday.

An INS brigade, headed by the institute’s Deputy Director, Eduardo Samo Gudo, is currently in Afungi, investigating the Covid-19 cluster there. It plans to test all the Total employees, and to decontaminate the camp.

“We are talking about various groups of workers in the camp, who have various functions”, said Chicumbe. “It s necessary to understand how, in the exercise of their duties, these people relate with each other”.

He expected the number of tests per day at Afungi to reach 100. Although there were 6,000 people working at Afungi at the start of the year, now the number has dropped to less than 800.

The key Covid-19 statistics for Mozambique have been unchanged for two days: they are 76 positive cases, of whom nine have made a full recovery, and 67 are considered as active cases, and no deaths.

Asked about the supposed cure for Covid-19 announced on 21 April by the President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, Marlene said there was not yet enough scientific evidence to support using Rajoelina’s concoction. “Obviously, if it is shown to be effective against Covid-19, we shall be the first to use it”, she said.

Rajoelina’s miracle cure is a herbal tea, which he calls Covid-Organics. Although it had only been tested on 20 people, Rajoelina claimed that it produces results in seven days and that it has already cured two people. The tea is believed to be derived from the artemisia plant (also known as sweet wormwood), from which the anti-malarial drug artemisinin is produced.

But malaria is vastly different from Covid-19. Malaria is caused by a single-celled parasite, known as a plasmodium, transmitted through mosquito bites, while Covid-19 is a viral disease. Nonetheless, studies into the use of artemisia against Covid-19 are under way in several countries.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that there is no evidence that Rajoelina’s supposed cure is effective. A statement issued by the world body said that WHO does not recommend “self-medication with any medicines… as a prevention or cure for Covid-19”.

Rajoelina’s credibility took a dent when he claimed on 24 April that his Senegalese counterpart, Macky Sall, had made the first order for Covid-Organics. Senegal promptly denied making any such order.

Source: O Pais / AIM