Mozambique: Northern provinces accounting for almost three quarters of new Covid-19 cases – AIM

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Mozambique: Northern provinces accounting for almost three quarters of new Covid-19 cases – AIM

7:40 CAT | 30 Aug 2021

File photo: O País

The latest data from the Mozambican Health Ministry confirm Friday’s warning by President Filipe Nyusi, that the Covid-19 respiratory disease is striking at the north of the country, while the pandemic is easing elsewhere.

According to a Friday press release from the Ministry, of the 731 new cases diagnosed that day, 72.5 per cent came from the four provinces north of the Zambezi – 269 from Niassa, 156 from Nampula, 73 from Zambezia and 32 from Cabo Delgado.

The seven provinces south of the Zambezi supplied only 27.5 per cent of the cases – 70 in Inhambane, 61 in Maputo city, 32 in Gaza, 25 in Maputo province, six in Tete, five in Sofala and two in Manica.

Since the start of the pandemic, 842,455 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 3,751 of them in the previous 24 hours. 3,020 of the tests yielded negative results, while 731 people tested positive for the virus. The number of cases of Covid-19 diagnosed in Mozambique has now risen to 145,199.

Of Friday’s new cases, 375 were women or girls and 356 were men or boys. 92 were children under the age of 15, and 43 were over 65 years old. In 31 cases, no age information was available. Throughout August, over half of the Covid-19 cases diagnosed have been women, whereas in all preceding months the majority of cases were consistently men. It is not yet known what has caused this shift in the gender balance.

The positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be carrying the coronavirus) on Friday was 19.5 per cent, a considerable increase on the 15.7 per cent found on Thursday and the 10.6 per cent on Wednesday.

The northern provinces account for this shift. The provinces with the largest positivity rates on Friday were Niassa (35.7 per cent), Nampula (29.4 per cent) and Zambezia (27.1 per cent). The lowest rates were reported from Manica (2.9 per cent) and Tete (3.6 per cent).

The Ministry release reported a further nine deaths from Covid-19 – five men and four women, all Mozambican citizens, and aged between 18 and 85. Five of the deaths occurred in Maputo city, two in Maputo province, one in Gaza and one in Niassa. This brings the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,834.

Over the same 24 hour period, ten Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (eight in Maputo, one in Matola and one in Manica), and 16 new cases were admitted (eight in Maputo, two each in Matola, Gaza and Manica, one in Sofala and one in Zambezia).

The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 150 on Thursday to 147 on Friday. 84 of these patients (57.1 per cent) were in Maputo, 12 were in Matola, ten in Nampula, eight in Niassa, eight in Zambezia, seven in Inhambane, six in Sofala, four in Gaza, three in Manica, three in Cabo Delgado, and two in Tete.

The Ministry also reported that on Friday 377 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (168 in Nampula, 126 in Zambezia, 56 in Inhambane and 27 in Manica). This brings the total number of recoveries to 130,642, or 90 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 12,374 on Thursday to 12,719 on Friday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo province, 4,295 (33.8 per cent of the total); Maputo city, 3,561; Nampula, 1,484; Inhambane, 998; Niassa, 782; Zambezia, 638; Cabo Delgado, 481; Gaza, 337; Sofala, 80; Tete, 33; and Manica, 30.

Source: AIM