Covid-19: Exponential rise in number of new cases

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Covid-19: Exponential rise in number of new cases

5:26 CAT | 01 Jan 2022

File photo: WHO/D.Elombat

The number of new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease diagnosed in Mozambique is rising exponentially.

The health authorities reported that on Thursday 4,947 cases were diagnosed – by far the largest number of cases ever identified in a single 24 hour period. This followed 3,624 cases diagnosed on Wednesday, and 3,473 on Tuesday.

According to a Thursday press release from the Ministry of Health, since the start of the pandemic 1,087,526 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 11,500 of them in the previous 24 hours,

6,553 of the tests yielded negative results. The 4,947 positive cases brought the number of people diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique to 184,219.

2,706 of the new cases were women and 2,235 were men. In six cases, the sex of the patient was not given. 627 cases were children under the age of 15.

The far south accounted for 28.7 per cent of the new cases – 780 in Maputo city and 622 in Maputo province. There were also 673 cases in Sofala, 607 in Gaza, 587 in Inhambane, 432 in Cabo Delgado, 418 in Manica, 286 in Zambezia, 247 in Nampula, 179 in Tete, and 116 in Niassa.

The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be infected) rose from 41.23 per cent on Wednesday to 43.02 per cent on Thursday.

Over the same 24 hour period, 20 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (10 in Maputo, four in Inhambane, two in Gaza, and one each in Matola, Sofala, Zambezia and Niassa), while 55 new cases were admitted (27 in Maputo, 11 in Matola, seven in Inhambane, three in Sofala, three in Niassa, two in Zambezia and two in Niassa).

The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres rose from 158 on Wednesday to 184 on Thursday. 119 of these patients (64.7 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 14 patients in Inhambane, 13 in Sofala, 10 in Matola, seven in Niassa, seven in Manica, six in Zambezia, five in Gaza, and three in Cabo Delgado. Nampula and Tete remained the only provinces where no Covid-19 patients were hospitalised.

The Health Ministry reported a further eight deaths from Covid-19, four in Maputo city, three in Maputo province and one in Inhambane. Five of these victims were men and three were women. They were aged between 40 and 77. This brought the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1,996.

2,272 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 – 1,856 of them in Maputo city, 295 in Inhambane, 108 in Sofala and 13 in Cabo Delgado. This brought the total number of recoveries to 156,003, which is 84.7 per cent of all those diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

The number of active cases of Covid-19 continued to rise – from 23,549 on Wednesday to 26,216 on Thursday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 6,783 (25.9 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 6,702; Inhambane, 2,820; Gaza, 2,782; Manica, 2,067; Sofala, 1,609; Cabo Delgado, 1,102; Nampula, 751; Zambezia, 740; Tete, 590; and Niassa, 270.

The Ministry release also reported that over the previous 24 hours, a further 126,161 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. To date, 6,350.011 people have been fully vaccinated against the disease, and 8,863,764 have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Source: AIM