Mozambique: Coronavirus positivity rate rises sharply – AIM

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Mozambique: Coronavirus positivity rate rises sharply – AIM

5:26 CAT | 01 Jul 2021

File photo: Lusa

According to the Mozambican health authorities, well over a quarter of those tested on Wednesday were positive for the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease, and in the two central provinces of Tete and Manica, over half of those tested were carrying the virus.

Since the start of the pandemic, 597,833 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 2,103 of them in the previous 24 hours. According to a Wednesday press release from the Health Ministry, 597 of the samples tested (29.4 per cent) were from Maputo city, 323 from Tete, 231 from Cabo Delgado, 186 from Sofala, 134 from Maputo province, 118 from Zambezia, 106 from Nampula, 104 from Inhambane, 99 from Manica and six from Niassa. No tests were reported from Gaza.

1,527 of the tests yielded negative results, and 576 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 76,404. The number of positive cases is the largest recorded in a single 24 hour period since mid-March,

Once again the known Covid-19 hotspots of Maputo and Tete accounted for many of the cases, but they are now joined by a spurt of new cases in the central provinces of Manica and Sofala. There were 198 cases diagnosed in Maputo city, 175 in Tete, 54 in Maputo province, 74 in Sofala and 54 in Manica. Between them, these five provinces accounted for 96.2 per cent of the new cases diagnosed on Wednesday.

There were also 15 cases in Zambezia, five in Inhambane, one in Nampula and one in Cabo Delgado.

The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the coronavirus) was 27.4 per cent on Wednesday, the highest rate over the past week. There is a sharp difference in positivity rates between the five provinces with the largest number of Covid-19 cases and the rest of the country. The rates were 54.5 per cent in Manica, 54.2 per cent in Tete, 40.2 per cent in Maputo province, 39.2 per cent in Sofala, and 24.9 per cent in Maputo city.

But the situation is very different in the north, with positivity rates of 12.7 per cent in Zambezia, 0.9 per cent in Nampula and 0.4 per cent in Cabo Delgado. This cannot be attributed to lack of testing: there were 231 tests in Cabo Delgado, and 106 in Nampula. In both provinces, only one person tested positive.

The Ministry release said that, in the same 24 hour period, 17 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (14 in Maputo, two in Matola and one in Tete). This was more than outweighed by 33 new admissions (20 in Maputo, five in Tete, four in Sofala, two in Matola and two in Niassa).

The number of people hospitalised in the Covid-19 treatment centres thus grew from 176 on Tuesday to 186 on Wednesday. Of these patients, 123 (66.1 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 24 patients in Tete, 16 in Sofala, 13 in Matola, three in Niassa, two each in Nampula, Zambezia and Manica, and one in Inhambane. The Covid-19 wards in Cabo Delgado and Gaza remained empty.

The Ministry also reported that 19 people made a full recovery from Covid-19 on Wednesday (14 in Nampula and five in Niassa). The total number of recoveries now stands at 71,205, which is 93.2 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

A further six deaths from Covid-19 were reported on Wednesday – the largest death toll in a single 24 hour period for all of June. The victims were four men and two women, all Mozambican citizens, aged between 31 and 89. The number of Covid-19 deaths in June was 44 – exactly twice the number of fatalities in May. The national death toll from Covid-19 now stands at 878.

The number of active Covid-19 cases rose from 3,766 on Tuesday to 4,317 on Wednesday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo city, 1,907 (44.2 per cent of the total); Tete, 892; Maputo province, 756; Sofala, 280; Inhambane, 140; Manica, 135; Niassa, 72; Gaza, 52; Zambezia, 35; Cabo Delgado, 32; and Nampula, 16.

Source: AIM