Covid-19: Worst day so far in the pandemic

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Covid-19: Worst day so far in the pandemic

12:48 CAT | 31 Dec 2021

Photo: in file CoM

The Mozambican health authorities have reported that Tuesday was the country’s worst day so far in the Covid-19 pandemic, with the number of cases diagnosed reaching 3,473, and the positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the virus) soaring to over 47 per cent.

This was the first time that the number of new cases identified in a 24 hour period exceeded 3,000. The worst day previously was 24 December, with 2,770 cases.

According to a Tuesday press release from the Ministry of Health, since the start of the pandemic, 1,067,236 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 7,294 of them in the previous 24 hours.

3,821 of these tests gave negative results, while 3,473 tested positive for the virus. This brings the total number of people diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique to 175,648.

Of the new cases identified on Tuesday, 1,894 were women, 1,572 were men, and in seven cases the sex of the infected people was not reported. 360 were children under the age of 15.

Once again, the great majority of the new cases were from the south of the country. 74 per cent of the cases were from the four provinces south of the Save river – Maputo city (1.025 cases), Maputo province (498), Gaza (386) and Inhambane (661).

There were also 227 cases from Sofala, 192 from Manica, 135 from Tete, 135 from Zambezia, 110 from Cabo Delgado, 75 from Nampula and 30 from Niassa.

The positivity rate rose from 37.81 per cent on Monday to 47.61 per cent on Tuesday. Thus almost half of those tested were carrying the virus. But this is a nationwide average – some provinces had higher positivity rates, notably Inhambane (74.1 per cent), Gaza (51.06 per cent), and Sofala (51.8 per cent). Only in the northern province of Cabo Delgado did the positivity rate fall to below 30 per cent (29.02 per cent).

Over the same 24 hour period, 22 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (eight in Maputo, five in Inhambane, four in Sofala, three in Matola and two in Manica), while 46 new cases were admitted (26 in Maputo, six in Gaza, five in Inhambane, two each in Matola, Niassa, Manica and Sofala, and one in Zambezia).

The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres rose from 107 on Monday to 128 on Tuesday. 89 of these patients (69.5 per cent) were in Maputo. 11 in Gaza, 10 in Inhambane, six in Sofala, five in Niassa, three in Matola, two in Manica, one in Cabo Delgado, and one in Zambezia. In only two provinces (Nampula and Tete) were no Covid-19 patients hospitalised.

The Health Ministry reported a further three Covid-19 deaths. The victims were a 55 year old Mozambican man, who died in Maputo city, and two Mozambican women, aged 71 and 77, one of whom died in Maputo and the other in Matola. This brought the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 1.976.

A further 451 people were declared to have made a full recovery from Covid-19, 392 of them in Gaza, 26 in Sofala, 20 in Nampula, 11 in Cabo Delgado and two in Zambezia. This brings the total number of recoveries to 153,026, which is 87.1 per cent of all those diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

With the number of new cases far exceeding the number of recoveries, the number of active cases soared from 17,623 on Monday to 20,642 on Tuesday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 7.145 (34.6 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 5,948; Inhambane, 2,281; Gaza, 1,752; Manica, 1,477; Sofala, 755; Cabo Delgado, 385; Tete, 329; Nampula, 263; Zambezia, 254; and Niassa, 103.

After a three day break over the Christmas weekend, the national vaccination campaign resumed on Tuesday. That day. 90,601 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. To date, 6,084,817 people have been fully vaccinated against the disease, and 8,633,965 have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Source: AIM