Coronavirus arrives in South Africa; Mozambique’s land borders lack medical control measures – A Verdade

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Coronavirus arrives in South Africa; Mozambique’s land borders lack medical control measures – A Verdade

12:02 CAT | 06 Mar 2020

Photo: A Verdade

South African authorities announced on Thursday (05) the existence of a patient with the coronavirus, the epidemic that started in China and spread around the world, causing the death of 3,198 people, 214 of which were registered outside the Asian country.

“We are going to place telephone numbers of chief doctors and clinical directors of hospitals at airports to prevent people with mild symptoms from going to health facilities and being a source of contamination,” Mozambican Health Minister Armindo Tiago announced.

The Minister does not know how many health professionals have been posted at each land border or how many travellers from South Africa have been screened.

@Verdade witnessed dozens of citizens crossing the Ressano Garcia border without being approached by the only health professional there, who was busy on his mobile phone.

South African Health Minister Zweli Mkhize announced the registration of the first confirmed case of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in a 38-year-old citizen.

“He, his wife and two children were part of a group of ten people who returned to South Africa on 1 March. The patient consulted a general practitioner on 3 March with symptoms of fever, headache, a sore throat and cough,” she told a press conference.

With the coronavirus so close to Maputo, the South African in question residing in KwaZulu-Natal, the province that borders Mozambique in the Ponta do Ouro region, the Mozambican government announced, through the its Minister of Health, “the creation of a Technical Committee which will analyse the trend of epidemic cases globally and will, on a daily basis, update the list of countries subject to home quarantine, above all, but the hospital quarantine criteria will only be disseminated if there is, eventually, any case”.

Although the World Health Organisation last February 28th updated the risk level of Covid-19 to “very high” worldwide, only now has Mozambique announced the reinforcement of the screening, “particularly in the land border posts of Ponta do Ouro, Goba and Namaacha,” as Minister Tiagoannouned at a press conference this Thursday (5th).

“We are also going to make a strong reinforcement in the segment of passengers [coming] from the areas of active and high local transmission (there are 72 countries with active local transmission and Algeria is one of them). We will place telephone numbers of chief doctors and directors of hospitals at the airports to ensure that any individual who is in a home quarantine situation can call these numbers in case of symptoms and will quickly be directed to the health facility. This phenomenon of the distribution of telephone numbers is to prevent people with mild symptoms going to health facilities and being a possible source of contamination,” explained Tiago.

Covid-19’s symptoms are similar to the flu: a dry cough, fever, difficulty breathing and, in more acute cases, pneumonia. Contagion is airborne or through contact with objects contaminated by droplets of saliva or phlegm from coughing and sneezing. The similarities with the flu end there, however, and the disease caused by the new coronavirus is much more contagious. And, because it is a new virus, peoples’ immune systems have not yet developed any type of immunity against it.

Travellers from South Africa are not being tracked at the Ressano Garcia border

Misau-ministro-coronavirus — *Photo: A Verdade*

Asked by @Verdade about the number of health professionals currently screening travellers at land borders, the Minister of Health revealed his ignorance. “It must be variable and depends on movement at each of our borders [border crossing], in any case, and since we have to reinforce the measures, the Provincial Health Directorate of Maputo is already working to increase the number of professionals to a minimum of four at each border entry posts, who will, of course, work in shifts,” he said.

Minister Tiago and the team of doctors who accompanied him during the press conference were also unable to tell @Verdade how many travellers from South Africa had been screened in the past few days.

Mozambican citizens who travelled to South Africa via the Ressano Garcia border on Wednesday and Thursday told @Verdade: “They tested my temperature on the South African border as I entered.” On the way back, no one pays attention to you. “Nothing on the Mozambican side, but I saw a nurse.”

@Verdade confirmed the presence of just one health professional at the Ressano Garcia border post, where at least 3,000 citizens enter Mozambique every day. According to the Migration Service, in addition to these, a further 1,000 travellers enter Maputo every day at the Libombos, Goba and Ponta do Ouro border crossings.

Meanwhile, a national medical authority drew the attention of @Verdade to the fact that none of the cases that tested positive outside China were detected at border posts. “Of the cases imported globally, how many crossed the borders? All of them. The probability of detection is small.”

@Verdade found that, of the viruses that have become global outbreaks in recent years, Mozambique recorded more than a hundred cases of H1N1 flu, but the disease had a worldwide mortality rate of only 0.02 to 0.4 percent, compared to the current 3.4 percent rate of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Of epidemics with higher mortality rates, the world has faced H7N9 flu, with a 39 percent lethality rate, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), with 9.5 percent, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) ), with a 34.4 percent lethality rate.

By Adérito Caldeira

Source: A Verdade