Covid-19: Health authorities trying to locate baby who tested positive in Beira – Mozambique

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Covid-19: Health authorities trying to locate baby who tested positive in Beira – Mozambique

2:50 CAT | 15 May 2020

Photo: Miramar

The whereabouts of the seven-month-old child who recently tested positive for Covid-19, in the city of Beira, are not known, Minister of Health Armindo Tiago revealed yesterday while on a working visit to this part of the country.

The authorities were having difficulty locating the child because the parents had moved. Minister Tiago explained.

The child is one of a group of four people who tested positive from samples collected at Beira Central Hospital. She lived with her parents in the Mutua accommodation centre, home to about a thousand people in Dondo district.

The health minister said that efforts to locate the child were ongoing. “The seven-month-old child is still being difficult to locate, the parents having moved from the neighbourhood. But we are getting the mother’s name from the hospital maternity and will probably be able to find the baby soon,” he said.

The baby would then be treated, and prevented from infecting others.

Samples from about 100 of those in contact with the four infected people had already been collected, the minister said, and the results announced in the next few days. These include people from Beira and Dondo.

Use of disinfectant tunnels lacks specific guidance from WHO

The use of disinfection tunnels as a way of preventing the spread of Covid-19 still lacks clear guidance from the World Health Organisation (WHO), Minister Tiago pointed out, but the Technical-Scientific Commission would soon produce recommendations on the correct way to use the tunnels.

In the health sector, he recalled, there was a fundamental principle that anything should have more benefits than losses.

“Anything that has losses, even small ones, must be avoided,” he said, at a time when the installation and use of disinfection tunnels is multiplying all over the country.

Tiago explained that, technically, tunnels were good only if they had hypochlorite on the floor to wet the shoe.

“Therefore, we are going to make this recommendation to the Technical-Scientific Committee, in relation to the tunnels,” the minister of health said.

Source: Noticias / Rádio Moçambique