Covid-19: February begins to take a deadly toll – AIM report

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Covid-19: February begins to take a deadly toll – AIM report

5:37 CAT | 05 Feb 2021

File photo: Lusa

The initial days of February have seen no reduction in the train of disease and death that characterized January, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to claim Mozambican victims, and puts increasing strains on the national health service.

In the first four days of February, 50 Covid-19 deaths were reported – 19 reported on Monday, 17 on Tuesday, 12 on Wednesday and a further 12 on Thursday.

Of the deaths announced by the Health Ministry on Thursday, seven were men and five were women, aged between nine and 75. All were Mozambican nationals. Seven died in Maputo city, two in Gaza, one in Maputo province, one in Sofala and one in Zambezia.

The total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique now stands at 427. 338 of these (79.2 per cent) occurred in Maputo city.

A press release from the Health Ministry said that, since the start of the pandemic, 356,317 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 2,614 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 1,107 were from Maputo city, 336 from Sofala, 331 from Maputo province, 306 from Gaza, 199 from Inhambane, 156 from Nampula, 109 from Zambezia, 53 from Tete, 11 from Manica, and six from Niassa. No tests were reported from Cabo Delgado.

1,559 of the tests gave negative results, and 1,055 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 42,488. The positivity rate for the cases reported on Thursday (the proportion of those tested who are carrying the virus) was 40.4 per cent – considerably higher than the rates recorded earlier in the week: 35 per cent on Wednesday, 30.3 per cent on Tuesday, 27.9 per cent on Monday, and 24.8 per cent on Sunday.

1,026 of the Thursday cases are known to be Mozambicans, two are foreigners (but the Ministry did not reveal their nationalities), and the nationalities of the other 27 have yet to be confirmed. 553 are women or girls and 502 are men or boys. 44 are children under the age of 15, and 69 are over 65 years old. For 33 cases no age information was available.

Once again, the majority of the new cases came from the far south – 476 from Maputo city and 127 from Maputo province. Thus, 57.2 per cent of the cases reported on Thursday were from Maputo city and province. There were also 176 cases from Gaza, 124 from Sofala, 81 from Inhambane, 27 from Nampula, 21 from Zambezia, 13 from Tete, seven from Manica and three from Niassa.

The Ministry reported that, in the same 24 hour period, 26 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (18 in Maputo, three in Matola, three in Sofala, and two in Tete), but 38 new cases were admitted (35 in Maputo, two in Sofala and one in Zambezia).

As of Thursday, 335 people were under medical care in the Covid-19 wards. The great majority of them – 249 (74.3 per cent) – were in Maputo. There were also 18 in Matola, 17 in Sofala, 16 in Tete, 12 in Inhambane, nine in Zambezia, five in Gaza, three in Manica, and two each in Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula. Thus each of Mozambique’s 11 provinces has at least two people under care in a Covid-19 isolation ward.

According to the Ministry release, a further 188 people made a full recovery from Covid-19 on Thursday (103 in Zambezia, 59 in Nampula and 26 in Tete). The total number of recoveries now stands at 25,673, which is 60.4 per cent of all those diagnosed with the coronavirus in Mozambique.

With the number of new cases continuing to outstrip the number of recoveries, the number of active Covid-19 cases is rising remorselessly, and has now reached 16,384. The geographical distribution of the active cases is as follows: Maputo city, 8,734 (53.3 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 2,253; Gaza, 1,123; Sofala, 1,048; Inhambane, 834; Manica, 640; Niassa, 637; Zambezia, 378; Nampula, 317; Cabo Delgado, 307; Tete, 113.

Source: AIM