Mozambique: One Mozambican deported from South Africa has Covid-19 – AIM report

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Mozambique: One Mozambican deported from South Africa has Covid-19 – AIM report

4:38 CAT | 13 May 2020

Photo: INS

Of the 400 Mozambicans deported from South Africa via the Ressano Garcia border post, so far just one has tested positive for the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease, according to the National Director of Public Health, Rosa Marlene.

Speaking on Tuesday, at the Health Ministry’s daily press briefing on the Covid-19 crisis, Marlene said that to date 4,365 suspect cases have been tested, 192 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of these samples, 191 were negative, and one tested positive for Covid-19.

ALSO READ: Just In: Three more test positive for Covid-19; two are Mozambicans deported from South Africa

Marlene said the positive case was a 26 year old Mozambican man who was part of the group repatriated from South Africa. His sample was taken in the Munguazi Transit Centre, set up by the government in Moamba district, Maputo province.

This man was asymptomatic and has been ordered to undertake home isolation. This cannot be done at the transit centre, so he has been allowed to self-isolate in his home province of Gaza.

Marlene added “we are trying to understand the circumstances under which he was infected so that we can trace his contacts”.

The samples tested included the final 23 from the camp operated by the French oil and gas company Total, on the Afungi Peninsula in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. The Total camp is the site of the largest known cluster of Covid-19 cases in the country, but none of the last 23 samples tested positive.

There were also 119 samples from Maputo province (including Mozambicans repatriated from South Africa), 48 from Maputo city and two from Gaza.

ALSO READ: South Africa:’s mass deportations in full pandemic, to Mozambique, Zimbabwe – Watch.

With the new case, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country stands at 104. 34 of these have now made a full recovery, while 170 are active cases. There have been no deaths from Covid-19, and nobody has been hospitalised because of the disease.

Marlene warned that the appearance of new chains of transmission, as shown by cases announced on Monday from Sofala and Inhambane provinces, was alarming and “should be another motive for strengthening strict compliance with the preventive measures already announced by the government, manly social distancing and the correct use of masks”.

But when, on Wednesday morning, the independent television station STV visited the bus terminal in the outer Maputo neighbourhood of Zimpeto, there was no sign of any social distancing. Queues were disorderly and would-be passengers were fighting to enter buses and mini-buses as though they had never heard of the pandemic. Some people were wearing masks but this was far from universal.

And the open trucks, full of passengers crammed together like so much livestock, and known jokingly by the English expression “my love”, are still in business, although Maputo Municipal Council has specifically outlawed this degrading form of transport.

Source: AIM