Mozambique: As third wave bites,Covid-19 records are broken – AIM report

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Mozambique: As third wave bites,Covid-19 records are broken – AIM report

8:55 CAT | 12 Jul 2021

File photo: TVM

The Mozambican health authorities have announced that on Saturday the Covid-19 pandemic broke two sinister records – for the number of new cases diagnosed in a single 24 hour period, and for the number of people hospitalised with the disease at any one time.

On Saturday, 1,686 people were found to be infected with the coronavírus that causes Covid-19. The earlier record was set just four days earlier, last Tuesday, when 1,458 people were diagnosed with the coronavirus.

The four worst days for the Mozambican epidemic were all within the past week:

6 July – 1,458 cases

8 July – 1,437 cases

9 July – 1.327 cases

10 July – 1,686 cases

The worst day prior to this month was 29 January, with 1,275 cases.

A Health Ministry press release announced that 15 Covid-19 deaths were reported on Saturday. These latest victims were eight men and seven women, all Mozambican citizens, and aged between 24 and 83. Nine of them died in Maputo city, four in Tete, one in Manica and one in Inhambane.

There were 84 deaths in the first ten days of July, considerably higher than the combined figure for all of May and June, which was 66 deaths. The total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique now stands at 962.

Since the start of the pandemic, 635,898 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 4,974 of them in the previous 24 hours. Most of the samples tested came from Maputo and Tete – 2,137 from Maputo city, 894 from Tete, and 405 from Maputo province. Between them, these three provinces accounted for 69.1 per cent of Saturday’s tests.

There were also 315 tests from Nampula, 307 from Inhambane, 284 from Gaza, 259 from Sofala, 133 from Zambezia, 122 from Cabo Delgado, 117 from Manica, and one from Niassa.

3,288 of the tests yielded negative results, and 1,686 people tested positive for the coronavirus. Thus brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 87,935.

999 of Saturday’s positive cases were from Maputo city, 312 were from Tete and 127 were from Maputo province. Thus between them Maputo (city and province) and Tete accounted for 85.3 per cent of the new cases. There were also 116 cases from Gaza, 41 from Manica, 33 from Inhambane, 26 from Sofala, 16 from Zambezia, eight from Nampula and eight from Cabo Delgado. The one sample tested from Niassa proved negative.

The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Saturday was 33.9 percent – rather lower than the 37.4 per cent recorded on Friday, but still meaning that more than one in three of the people tested was found to be carrying the virus.

When broken down by provinces, the positivity rate shows a sharp divide between south and north. Five of the seven provinces south of the Zambezi had positivity rates of over 30 per cent, but in the four northern provinces the rate fell to 12 per cent or lower.

Maputo city had the highest positivity rate, of 46.7 per cent, followed by Gaza (40.8 per cent), Manica (35 per cent), Tete (34.9 per cent), and Maputo province (31.4 per cent).

North of the Zambezi, the positivity rate in Zambezia was 12 per cent, but fell to 6.6 per cent in Cabo Delgado, and 2.5 per cent in Nampula. Not much can be said about Niassa, since only one test was undertaken there (which proved negative).

Over the same 24 hour period, 25 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (12 in Tete, nine in Maputo, and one each in Niassa, Zambezia, Sofala and Matola). But 61 new patients were admitted (45 in Maputo, five in Tete, five in Manica, two in Gaza and one each in Matola, Zambezia, Sofala and Inhambane).

The number of people being treated for Covid-19 in hospital facilities, rose from 330 on Friday to 351 on Saturday – the highest number since the start of the pandemic. 260 of these patients (74.1 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 28 in Tete, 25 in Sofala, 16 in Matola, 11 in Manica, five in Gaza, three in Inhambane, and one each in Niassa, Nampula and Zambezia. Cabo Delgado remains the only province where no Covid-19 patients are hospitalised.

Maputo hospitals are now running out of beds for Covid-19 patients. Both Maputo Central Hospital and the Polana-Canico General Hospital have warned that their capacity is almost exhausted. Beds are still available at the Mavalane General Hospital, the third hospital in the city with facilities for treating Covid-19.

The Ministry’s Saturday release added that only five people were declared completely recovered from Covid-19 in the previous 24 hours, all of them in Cabo Delgado. The total number of recoveries now stands at 72,899, which is 82.9 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

With the number of new cases greatly outstripping the number of recoveries, the number of active Covid-19 cases inevitably continues to rise – from 12,404 on Friday to 14,070 on Saturday. The geographical breakdown of the active cases was: Maputo city, 6,920 (49.2 per cent of the total); Tete, 2,533; Maputo province, 2,093; Manica, 688; Gaza, 582; Sofala, 565; Inhambane, 295; Niassa, 225; Zambezia, 77; Nampula, 58; and Cabo Delgado, 34.

Source: AIM