Mozambique: Two mpox cases confirmed in Manica province, Maputo city now has six suspected cases
Photo: Miramar
The Mozambican health authorities on Thursday reported a further 41 cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease, most of them in Maputo city.
Speaking at a Maputo press conference, the National Director of Public Health, Rosa Marlene, said that, since the start of the pandemic, 65,151 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 1,426 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of these, 1,050 were tested in public facilities and 376 in privately owned laboratories.
The private laboratories only tested samples from Cabo Delgado (226) and from Maputo City (150). Of all the samples tested, 437 were from Maputo city, 423 from Cabo Delgado, 159 from Nampula, 151 from Maputo province, 148 from Inhambane, 88 from Zambezia, 16 from Sofala, three from Gaza and one from Manica.
1,385 of the tests were negative and 41 tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of positive cases, since the first case was diagnosed on 22 March, to 2,120.
All the new cases are Mozambican citizens. 21 are women or girls and 20 are men or boys. Three are children under the age of 15, five are adolescents and youths aged between 15 and 24, 31 are adults aged between 25 and 64, and two are over 65 years old.
27 of the cases are from Maputo city, and six are from Maputo province (five from Matola city, and one from Manhica district). Four are from Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado province, and three are from Inhambane (one each from Inhambane city, Maxixe and Inhassoro). The final case was from the Zambezia provincial capital of Quelimane.
Asked about the Maputo city figures, the deputy director of the National Health Institute (INS), Eduardo Samo Gudo, admitted that Covid-19 in the capital was coming close to a state of community transmission.
To date, the health authorities have concluded that only in Nampula and Pemba cities in the north has the disease made the transition from an epidemic with foci of transmission to an epidemic with community transmission (which is more difficult to control).
Samo Gudo believed that Covid-19 in Maputo does not yet meet the criteria of community transmission which include, not just an increase in the number of cases, but an increase in the number of unrelated chains of transmission.
Marlene said that, in line with standard Ministry of Health procedures, all 41 new cases are now under home isolation, and their contacts are being traced.
Eleven Covid-19 patients are currently hospitalized in isolation units, six in Maputo city, four in Beira and one in Nampula. Marlene added that, over the same 24 hour period, a further 17 patients have made a full recovery from Covid-19 – eight in Cabo Delgado, six in Inhambane, and one each in Zambezia, Gaza and Maputo province. This brings the total number of recoveries to 795 (37.5 per cent of all cases).
As of Thursday, the geographical distribution of the 2,120 positive cases, by the provinces where they were diagnosed, was as follows: Maputo city, 495; Cabo Delgado, 492; Nampula, 438, Maputo province, 375; Sofala, 73; Tete, 58; Inhambane, 50; Zambezia, 47; Gaza, 44; Niassa, 30; Manica, 18.
Maputo has thus displaced Cabo Delgado as the province with the largest number of Covid-19 cases, If only active cases are considered, it is clear that the main hot spots for the epidemic are now Maputo city and province. There are 399 active cases in Maputo city and 264 in Maputo province, compared with 249 in Cabo Delgado and 201 in Nampula.
Maputo city and province thus account for slightly more than 50 per cent of all active cases in the country.
Currently, the basic Covid-19 statistics for Mozambique stand at: 2,120 confirmed cases, of whom 795 have made a full recovery and 1,308 are active cases. 17 Covid-19 patients have died, 15 from the disease, and two from other pathologies.
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