Coronavirus: Mozambique declares Pemba a community transmission site – Watch

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Coronavirus: Mozambique declares Pemba a community transmission site – Watch

12:58 CAT | 22 Jun 2020

Photo: INS

The Minister of Health of Mozambique yesterday declared the city of Pemba the second place in the country with coronavirus “community transmission” after Nampula (city), following the rapid increase in the number of infections in the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, in the north of the country.

“Pemba city is today declared the second geographical point [after the city of Nampula] to transition from the pattern of foci of transmission to one of community transmission,” Armindo Tiago told a press conference at the Ministry of Health in Maputo.

The first Covid-19 patient in Mozambique was announced on March 22 of this year. Pemba only registered its first case almost a month later (on April 22), but is now among the cities with the most active cases.

“We found a high percentage of positivity in the samples tested, which currently corresponds to almost double the national average,” Armindo Tiago said. The city now has “high interpersonal transferability”, as well as “a change in the demographic profile of Covid-19 cases “.

On June 6, the Ministry of Health declared the city of Nampula, also in northern Mozambique, the first point in the country with community coronavirus transmission.

The Mozambican government will adopt several measures In response to the situation in Pemba, with an emphasis on expanding active surveillance throughout Cabo Delgado province, which by Sunday had a total of 125 active cases.

“We are going to strengthen local epidemiological surveillance teams and intensify hygiene and sanitation actions,” Armindo Tiago said, adding that a Covid-19 testing laboratory would be opening by mid-July. Testing is currently carried out only in the southern province of Maputo.

Cabo Delgado is also home to Africa’s largest-ever private investment project, to extract natural gas, which is advancing despite the province being the target, since October 2017, of attacks by insurgents, classified since the beginning of the year by Mozambican and international authorities as a terrorist threat.

The two-and-half years of conflict in the province are estimated to have claimed at least 600 people lives and displaced around 200,000 more.

Over the weekend, Mozambique recorded its fifth death from Covid-19, plus new cases of Covid-19, bringing the total to 733, from the 688 cumulative confirmed cases known about on Saturday.

Of the cases already registered in Mozambique, 663 are classified as locally transmitted and 70 as imported, with nine people hospitalised in addition to the five deaths.

The Ministry of Health also registers 181 patients as recovered.

The provinces of Nampula, Cabo Delgado and the city of Maputo have the highest number of active cases in the country, with 218, 125 and 75 respectively.

Among Portuguese-speaking African countries, Equatorial Guinea leads in number of infections and deaths (1,664 cases and 32 deaths), followed by Guinea-Bissau (1,541 cases and 17 deaths), Cape Verde (863 cases and eight dead), São Tomé and Príncipe (693 cases and 12 dead) and Angola (176 infected and nine dead).

Brazil is the Portuguese-speaking country worst affected by the pandemic, and one of the hardest hit in the world, after the United States, with the second highest number of infected and dead (more than one million cases and 49,976 deaths).

The Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 464,000 lives and infected more than 8.8 million people in 196 countries and territories, according to a report by the French AFP news agency.