Mozambique / Covid-19: Rise in cases in the north, fall in the south – AIM report

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Mozambique / Covid-19: Rise in cases in the north, fall in the south – AIM report

6:01 CAT | 23 Aug 2021

File photo: TVM

According to the latest statistics from the Mozambican Ministry of Health, the Covid-19 pandemic is beginning to hit the northern provinces more severely than the south and centre of the country.

On Friday, 630 new cases of Covid-19 were reported, and 57.6 per cent of these were from the four provinces north of the Zambezi (Zambezia, Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado). The largest number of new cases – 158 – was reported from Niassa, followed by 88 in Zambezia, 63 in Nampula and 54 in Cabo Delgado.

The seven central and southern provinces accounted for 267 of the new cases or 43.4 per cent of the total. There were 90 cases in Maputo city, 61 in Inhambane, 45 in Maputo province, 42 in Manica, 20 in Gaza, five in Tete and four in Sofala.

Throughout July, the worst hit areas were the Greater Maputo Metropolitan area, and a band in central Mozambique running from Sofala to Tete. But now the number of new cases in Sofala and Tete has declined to a trickle, and even in Maputo the pandemic has slowed. These trends have become gradually visible over the last few weeks, but Friday was the first time the north overtook the couth in terms of new cases.

Results from several more days will be needed before it can be concluded that this is a genuine trend rather than a blip in the statistics.

Since the start of the pandemic, 822,281 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 3,924 of them in the last 24 hours. 3,294 of the tests yielded negative results, and 630 people tested positive for the coronavirus. Thus Mozambique has diagnosed a total of 142,013 cases of Covid-19.

325 of Friday’s new cases were women or girls and 305 were men or boys. Prior to August, the majority of Covid-19 cases were almost always men, but this month the statistics have been reversed, with more women than men catching the disease. 72 of the cases were children under the age of 15, and 42 were over 65 years old. For 42 cases, no age information was available.

The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected by the virus) on Friday was 16.1 per cent, a decline on the 19.3 per cent found on Thursday, The positivity rate on previous days was 17.3 per cent on Wednesday, 23.1 per cent on Tuesday, and 19.3 per cent on Monday.

The province with the highest positivity rate was Niassa (31.7 per cent), followed by Zambezia (27.9 per cent), Manica (21.1 per cent), Maputo province (16.5 per cent), and Cabo Delgado (16.3 per cent). The lowest positivity rates were found in Sofala (three per cent), and Tete (four per cent).

The Ministry also reported that, over the same 24 hour period, 19 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (18 in Maputo and one in Niassa), and 21 new cases were admitted (10 in Maputo, three in Niassa, three in Inhambane, two in Nampula, two in Gaza, and one in Sofala).

The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 223 on Thursday to 215 on Friday. 139 of these patients (64.7 per cent) were in Maputo, 15 in Matola, 12 in Nampula, 11 in Zambezia, 10 in Niassa, eight in Inhambane, six in Tete, five in Gaza, four in Sofala, three in Manica and two in Cabo Delgado.

The Ministry also reported a further 10 Covid-19 deaths. These victims were seven women and three men, all Mozambican citizens, and aged between 33 and 88. This brought the total number or Covid-19 deaths in Mozambique to 1,783.

On Friday, 603 people were declared as making a full recovery from Covid-19 (527 in Maputo province and 76 in Zambezia). The number of recoveries now stands at 123,350, or 86.9 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

The number of active Covid-19 cases rose slightly from 16,859 on Thursday to 16,876 on Friday. The geographical distribution of these cases was as follows: Maputo city, 5,986 (35.5 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 5,351; Inhambane, 1,229; Nampula, 1,167; Niassa, 1,025; Zambezia, 891; Gaza, 470; Manica, 353; Cabo Delgado, 322; Tete, 45; and Sofala, 37.

Source: AIM