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Mozambican takes more than two months to recover from Covid-19; “Some cases continue to test positive for up to 21 days”
1:56 CAT | 02 Jun 2020
Photo: INS
A Mozambican man diagnosed with Covid-19 in March was not considered fully recovered until late May. “People do not always return a negative test in 14 days. Some cases remain positive in the test until 21 days after the first positive test,” Director-General of the National Institute of Health Dr Ilesh Jani has admitted.
The Ministry of Health announced last Saturday (30) that the Mozambican, a male over 30 years of age residing in Maputo and first diagnosed on March 25, had fully recovered from Covid-19. He is one of the 97 positive cases in Mozambique considered fully recovered, but his case runs counter to the global trend indicating that patients recover in 14 days.
“In our African context, due to population specificities in terms of immunity, nutritional status and comorbidities, we are still learning many things, and healing time is one of them,” Dr Ilesh Jani said.
“At the beginning of the epidemic it was thought that the cure time was approximately 14 days. What has been seen in many countries is that people do not always get a negative test in 14 days; some cases remain positive in the test up to 21 days after the first positive test,” Dr Jani explained to @Verdade.
“There is a scientific trend that suggests that these tests, despite being positive, do not indicate whether patients are infectious. There is some work done in Singapore that indicates that even when some of the tests are positive, if the virus is not intact then it cannot infect other people, because the test we perform detects the genetic material, it does not detect whether it is infectious or if it is still whole.”
“But we continue to learn about this subject, and here we adopt the practice that we only declare recovered an individual who tests negative. Some positive cases we found continued positive for up to 21 days, sometimes a little more, and we do not declare this individual to have recovered,” Mozambique’s chief epidemiologist revealed.
No new positive cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed in Mozambique on Monday, as only 92 suspected cases – from Zambézia, Sofala and Maputo provinces – were tested.
By Adérito Caldeira
Source: A Verdade
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