Mozambique: Covid-19 samples sent to South Africa for gene sequencing

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Mozambique: Covid-19 samples sent to South Africa for gene sequencing

7:04 CAT | 25 May 2021

Screen grab: MISAU

To date the Mozambican health authorities have not detected the Indian variant of the coronavirus in patients suffering from the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

Speaking at a Maputo press conference on Monday, the national director of laboratories in the National Health Institute (INS), Sofia Viegas, said the INS has sent 400 samples from Covid-19 patients to the reference laboratory in South Africa for gene sequencing, to see whether they are positive for the Indian coronavirus stain, regarded as more virulent and transmissible than the original virus.

So far results have been received for 200 of the samples, said Viegas, and all have been negative. The other 200 are in a queue, since the South African institution is the reference laboratory for many African countries.

“The queue is long”, said Viegas, “because apart from work on the pandemic in South Africa itself, the laboratory has been supporting other countries”. She hoped that Mozambique would receive the results from the other samples “in the coming weeks”.

Equipment for gene sequencing is now available in Mozambique, and two laboratory technicians have been sent to Namibia for training in how to use it.

“We are now waiting for the company that distributes the equipment to come here to undertake training locally”, said Viegas. “We hope that, by October this year, we will have the technique implemented and validated, so that we can produce our own gene sequences”.

The Deputy National Director of Public Health, Benigna Matsinhe, told the reporters that the pandemic has slowed down in Mozambique. The slowdown could be seen in the number of new cases diagnosed, the decline in the number of Covid-19 patients hospitalised, the sharp fall in the number of deaths, and the increase in the number of people who have made a full recovery from Covid-19.

In the first 24 days of May, said Matsinhe, 689 new cases of the disease were reported, compared with 2,072 cases recorded in the same period in April. Between these two periods, the number of new cases had fallen by two thirds (by 66.75 per cent).

In May, 84 patients had been hospitalised with Covid-19: the figure for the first 24 days of April was 159. As for deaths, there had been 17 in May so far, which was a 42 per cent decline on the 32 Covid-19 deaths reported in the same period in April.

On 24 April, Matsinhe added, 89.7 per cent of all patients diagnosed with Covid-19 had recovered. By 24 May, the recovery rate had reached 97.9 per cent.

On Monday, Matsinhe said, no Covid-19 deaths had been reported. This was the third consecutive day with no deaths. The total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique remains 831.

Since the start of the pandemic, 545,951 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 608 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 199 were from Maputo city, 182 from Gaza, 53 from Niassa, 50 from Nampula, 48 from Inhambane, 38 from Cabo Delgado, 28 from Maputo province, five from Sofala, four from Tete and one from Manica. No tests were reported from Zambezia.

592 of the tests yielded negative results, and 16 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 70,606. 15 of the new cases were Mozambican citizens, and one was a foreigner (Matsinhe did not reveal his or her nationality). 11 were men and five were women. The cases included two children under the age of 15 and one person over 65 years old.

Five of the new cases were from Maputo city, four from Gaza, three from Nampula, and one each from Maputo province, Niassa, Sofala and Inhambane. No positive cases were reported from the other four provinces.

The positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected) for Monday was 2.6 per cent. This compares with rates of three per cent on Sunday, one per cent on Saturday, 1.6 per cent on Friday, 1.4 per cent on Thursday and 1.7 per cent on Wednesday. It is thus safe to say that the average daily positivity rate is now well below five per cent.

Over the same 24 hour period, Matsinhe reported, five Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (three in Maputo, one in Nampula and one in Tete), and four new cases were admitted (two in Maputo, one in Zambezia and one in Tete).

The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 19 on Sunday to 18 on Monday. 11 of these patients (61.1 per cent) were in Maputo city, three in Zambezia, two in Tete, and two in Nampula, The Covid-19 wards in the other seven provinces were empty.

Matsinhe said that 13 of those hospitalised are men and five are women. Seven are aged 60 or above, and eight are aged between 45 and 59. The clinical condition of ten of the patients is regarded as “moderate”, while six are seriously ill and two are in a critical condition. These two are on ventilators in an intensive care unit. 13 of the other patients are receiving oxygen therapy.

The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 657 on Sunday to 671 on Monday. The distribution of these cases was as follows: Sofala, 269 (40.1 per cent of the total); Maputo city, 180; Maputo province, 48; Nampula, 43; Niassa, 39; Tete, 27; Manica, 25; Inhambane, 16; Gaza, 12; Zambezia, 11; and Cabo Delgado, one.

Matsinhe urged all Mozambicans “to follow the guidelines from the authorities so that the country can soon be totally free of the disease, and some of the restrictive measures that have a negative impact on socio-economic live can be removed”.

Source: AIM