Covid-19: Shift in new cases northwards continues – AIM

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Covid-19: Shift in new cases northwards continues – AIM

7:54 CAT | 28 Aug 2021

File photo: Lusa

The Mozambican health authorities reported on Thursday that, for the fifth time in six days, more cases of the respiratory disease Covid-19 were diagnosed in the four provinces north of the Zambezi than in the seven central and southern provinces.

436 cases were identified on Thursday and 241 of them (55.3 per cent) were in the north – 95 in Zambezia, 85 in Nampula, 45 in Cabo Delgado and 16 in Niassa.

The rest of the country contributed 195 cases (44.7 per cent) – 89 in Inhambane, 72 in Maputo city, 11 in Sofala, ten in Gaza, nine in Maputo province, three in Tete and one in Manica.

According to a Ministry of Health press release on Thursday, since the start of the pandemic 838,704 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 2,782 of them in the previous 24 hours,

2,346 of these tests yielded negative results while 436 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 144,468. Of the cases identified on Thursday, 230 were women or girls, and 206 were men or boys. 38 were children under the age of 15, and 32 were over 65 years old. In 13 cases, no age information was available,

The positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be carrying the coronavirus) on Thursday was 15.7 per cent, a considerable increase on Wednesday’s rate of 10.6 per cent. The positivity rates earlier this week were 18.3 per cent on Tuesday, 15.4 per cent on Monday, and 14.9 per cent on Sunday,

The shift in the pandemic’s focus northwards was also shown in the positivity rate, for the provinces with the highest positivity rates on Thursday were Zambezia (34.7 per cent), Nampula (26.6 per cent), Inhambane (23.5 per cent), and Niassa (19.8 per cent). Three of the four provinces with rates higher than the national average are north of the Zambezi.

The lowest positivity rates were reported from the central provinces of Manica (1.5 per cent) and Tete (2.7 per cent).

The Ministry release reported a further three Covid-19 deaths – they were two men and one woman, all Mozambican citizens and aged 64, 85 and 88. Two died in Maputo city and one in Maputo province. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,825.

Over the same 24 hour period, 17 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (seven in Maputo, three in Matola, three in Nampula, two in Zambezia, one in Manica, and one in Gaza), and six new cases were admitted (two in Maputo and one each in Cabo Delgado, Niassa, Manica and Sofala).

The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres has continued to fall – from 164 on Wednesday to 150 on Thursday. 89 of these patients (59.3 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 13 patients in Matola, 10 in Nampula, nine in Niassa, seven in Zambezia, seven in Inhambane, five in Sofala, three in Gaza, three in Cabo Delgado, two in Tete and two in Manica.

The Ministry also reported that on Thursday 2,046 people were declared as having made a full recovery from Covid-19 (839 in Maputo city, 513 in Maputo province, 411 in Niassa, 135 in Inhambane, 103 in Gaza, 26 in Tete and 19 in Zambezia). The total number of recoveries now stands at 130,265, or 90.2 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

With the number of recoveries greatly exceeding the number of new cases, the number of active cases fell from 13,987 on Wednesday to 12,374 on Thursday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo province, 4,272 (34.5 per cent of the total); Maputo city, 3,505; Nampula, 1,496; Inhambane, 984; Zambezia, 691; Niassa, 514; Cabo Delgado, 449; Gaza, 306; Sofala, 75; Manica, 55; and Tete 27.

Source: AIM