Mozambique: Weekend sees sharp rise in Covid-19 cases – AIM

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Mozambique: Weekend sees sharp rise in Covid-19 cases – AIM

6:34 CAT | 14 Jun 2021

File photo: Rádio Moçambique

Diagnosed cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease rose alarmingly at the weekend, with 106 cases identified on Saturday, and 77 on Sunday.

Saturday was the first time since 11 April that the number of new cases diagnosed was more than 100 in a single 24 hour period.

The rise in new cases brought with it a rise in the positivity rate, an increase in the number of hospitalisations, and a rise in the number of active Covid-19 cases. The one bright spot is that over the weekend only one death from the disease was reported.

According to a Ministry of Health press release issued on Sunday, this latest victim was an 85 year old Mozambican man, who died in Maputo city on Saturday. This brings the total death toll from Covid-19 in Mozambique to 841.

Since the start of the pandemic, 568,101 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 1,371 of them on Saturday, and 937 on Sunday.

Of the samples tested on Sunday, 318 were from Maputo city, 165 from Inhambane, 128 from Tete, 91 from Gaza, 87 from Niassa, 82 from Maputo province, 36 from Sofala, 29 from Cabo Delgado and one from Manica. There were no reports of any tests in Nampula or Zambezia.

860 of the Sunday tests yielded negative results, and 77 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 71,538.

71 of Sunday’s new cases are Mozambican citizens, one is known to be a foreigner (but, as usual, the Ministry did not give his or her nationality), and in the other five cases, nationality has yet to be confirmed. 40 are women or girls and 37 are men or boys. Eight are children under the age of 15 and four are over 65 years old.

35 of the new cases were from Tete, and 17 from Maputo city. There were also 13 cases from Inhambane, five from Gaza, four from Maputo province, two from Niassa and one from Sofala. There were no positive cases from the other four provinces.

The positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected) for Saturday was 7.7 per cent and for Sunday 8.2 per cent – considerably higher than the rates earlier in the week (5.8 per cent on Friday, 3.4 per cent on Thursday, 5.6 per cent on Wednesday, and 2.5 per cent on Tuesday).

The Sunday Ministry release reported that, over the previous 24 hours, two new cases were hospitalised in the Covid-19 treatment centres (one in Maputo and one in Matola), and no Covid-19 patients were discharged.

22 people were under medical care in the Covid-19 wards on Sunday (up from 16 on Friday and 21 on Saturday). 16 of the patients (72.7 per cent) were in Maputo, three in Nampula, two in Matola and one in Tete.

No patients were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 on Saturday, and only three, all in Zambezia, on Sunday. The total number of recoveries stands at 69,881, or 97.7 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 633 on Friday to 739 on Saturday, and to 812 on Sunday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo city, 409 (50.4 per cent of the total); Tete, 157; Maputo province, 104; Inhambane, 55; Nampula, 22; Sofala, 22; Gaza, 12; Niassa, 10; Manica, nine; Cabo Delgado, seven; and Zambezia, five.

Given the increase in the number of cases, the Health Ministry urged “maximum seriousness in complying with the Covid-19 prevention measures”.

Source: AIM