Mozambique: 50 new coronavirus cases, mostly in Maputo – AIM

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Mozambique: 50 new coronavirus cases, mostly in Maputo – AIM

4:04 CAT | 06 Aug 2020

File photo: O Pais

The Mozambican health authorities on Wednesday announced that a further 50 cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease have been diagnosed, the great majority of them in Maputo city.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Health, since the start of the pandemic 63,725 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 1,352 of them in the previous 24 hours.

1,056 of these tests were administered in public facilities, and 296 in privately owned laboratories. The private sector only tested samples from Cabo Delgado (186) and from Maputo City (110).

Of all the samples tested, 435 came from Maputo city, 324 from Cabo Delgado, 240 from Maputo province, 85 from Zambezia, 85 from Tete, 68 from Nampula, 48 from Sofala, 35 from Manica, 21 from Niassa, nine from Inhambane and five from Gaza.

1,302 of these tests were negative, but 50 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the number of people diagnosed with the disease to 2,079 since the first case was discovered on 22 March.

49 of the new cases are Mozambicans, and one is an Indian citizen. 27 are women or girls and 23 are men or boys. Seven are children under the age of 15, four are youths aged between 15 and 24, and 36 are adults aged between 15 and 24. One is over 65 years old, and no age information was available for two cases.

39 of the new cases were diagnosed in Maputo city. This comes on top of 30 cases diagnosed in the capital the previous day. The city has now clearly become the main focus for Covid-19 in the country and, as has already happened in the northern cities of Nampula and Pemba, the disease in Maputo may be making a transition from an epidemic with foci of transmission to an epidemic with community transmission.

Of the remaining cases, six were from Maputo province (two in Matola city, two in Marracuene district, and one each in Namaacha and Manhica). Two were from Zambezia (one from the provincial capital, Quelimane, and one from Milange, on the border with Malawi), two were from Gaza (one in Chokwe and one in Bilene), and one was from Nampula city.

In line with standard Ministry of Health procedure, all 50 new cases are now under home isolation, and their contacts are being traced.

The Ministry release added that ten Covid-19 patients remain hospitalized in isolation wards – five in Maputo city, four in Beira and one in Nampula.

Over the same 24 hour period, 13 more patients made a full recovery from Covid-19 – four in Cabo Delgado, three in Nampula, three in Maputo City and three in Maputo province. This brings the total number of recoveries to 778 (which is 37.4 per cent of all positive cases).

As of Wednesday, the geographical distribution of the 2,079 positive cases, by the province where they were diagnosed, was as follows: Cabo Delgado, 488; Maputo city, 468; Nampula, 438; Maputo province, 369; Sofala, 73; Tete, 58; Inhambane, 47; Zambezia, 46; Gaza, 44; Niassa, 30; Manica 18.

The sharp rise in the number of cases diagnosed in the capital means that Maputo city has overtaken Nampula to become the province with the second largest number of cases. In terms of active cases, Maputo city, with 372 and Maputo province (258), have outstripped both Nampula (201) and Cabo Delgado (253).

The main Covid-19 statistics for Mozambique now stand at: 2,079 confirmed cases, of whom 778 have made a full recovery, and 1,284 are active cases. 17 Covid-19 patients have died, 15 from the disease itself, and two from other pathologies.

Source: AIM