Mozambique: 210 people on flight from Portugal go into quarantine – AIM report

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: 210 people on flight from Portugal go into quarantine – AIM report

4:21 CAT | 05 May 2020

About 200 people, including Mozambican citizens and foreigners with residence rights in Mozambique, landed at Maputo International Airport on Sunday, and went immediately into quarantine, monitored by the health authorities.

The flight from Lisbon to Maputo, operated by the Portuguese airline TAP, had caused a flurry of xenophobic, anti-Portuguese ravings on Mozambican social media. One inveterate scribbler on Facebook called the plane “a virological attack” on Mozambique, while another suggested that the Portuguese ambassador in Maputo should be declared persona non grata.

Speaking on Monday at the Ministry of Health’s daily press conference on the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Director of Public Health, Rosa Marlene, said the plane carried 210 people – these were 155 Mozambicans, 41 Portuguese, two Turks, one Brazilian, one Briton, plus the ten crew members.

Since Mozambique has issued no entry visas since the state of emergency began on 1 April, the non-Mozambican passengers must be resident foreigners.

Everybody on board the plane was screened and had to fill out a questionnaire. Samples were taken from all of them to be tested for the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

26 of the passengers are in transit, Marlene said, presumably to other Mozambican cities, since they are most unlikely to be able to catch a plane to any other country. They will remain in Maputo for at least 48 hours. During this period they will be in home quarantine, or accommodated in hotels “where all measures of prevention are being strictly complied with”, she added.

Asked if the passengers had been screened in Lisbon, before embarking on the plane, Marlene said she did not yet have that information but hoped to give it at the Tuesday press conference.

Marlene said that the total number of people tested in Mozambique for Covid-19 has now risen to 2,598. Of these, 132 were tested in the previous 24 hours, and all had proved negative. Thus the total number of Covid-19 cases in the country remains 80.

Of the latest 132 tests, 77 were carried out in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, 31 in Maputo City, eight in Maputo province, eight in Sofala, seven in Gaza and one in Nampula. All 77 tests in Cabo Delgado were part of the investigation into the cluster of positive cases diagnosed at the camp of the French oil and gas company Total, on the Afungi Peninsula.

The key Covid-19 statistics for Mozambique remain: 80 positive cases, of whom 19 have made a full recovery, while the other 61 are active cases, and no deaths.

Source: AIM