Mozambique: Deadliest Covid-19 week so far – AIM report

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Deadliest Covid-19 week so far – AIM report

5:30 CAT | 08 Feb 2021

Picture: Wikimedia Commons

The first seven days of February have proved the most lethal week so far in Mozambique’s Covid-19 epidemic, with 68 deaths, or an average of 9.7 a day.

Since the first death was reported on 25 May last year, 460 people have died of Covid-19. By the end of December 166 people had succumbed to the disease. But in January 2021, there were 201 Covid-19 deaths (6.5 a day), and at this rate February could outstrip January’s grim total.

According to a Ministry of Health press release, on Sunday nine deaths were reported. The victims were seven men and two women, all of Mozambican nationality, aged between 26 and 86. Three of the deaths were declared on Sunday, five on Saturday, and one on 22 January.

Six of the deaths occurred in Maputo city, two in Cabo Delgado and one in Gaza. The great majority of Covid-19 deaths – 357 (77.6 per cent) – have occurred in the capital.

Since the start of the pandemic, 363,047 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 1,905 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 559 were from Maputo city, 332 from Cabo Delgado, 254 from Niassa, 207 from Gaza, 200 from Maputo province, 115 from Manica, 114 from Nampula, 112 from Zambezia, 11 from Tete and one from Sofala. No tests were reported from Inhambane province.

1,417 of the tests gave negative results, and 488 tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of people diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique to 44,600.

The positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be carrying the virus) was 25.6 per cent on Monday, a decline on the rates found in the previous few days – 36.4 per cent on Saturday, 30.6 per cent on Friday, 40.4 per cent on Thursday, and 35 per cent on Wednesday. It remains to be seen whether Sunday’s lower rate is the start of a real trend, or merely a blip in the statistics.

474 of Sunday’s positive cases are known to be Mozambican citizens, four are foreigners (but the Ministry did not give their nationalities), and the nationality of the other ten is yet to be ascertained. 265 are men or boys and 223 are women or girls. 28 are children under the age of 15, and 30 are over 65 years old. In 11 cases, no age information was available.

Almost half of the cases were from the far south – 203 from Maputo city and 40 from Maputo province. Thus Maputo city and province accounted for 49.8 per cent of all cases reported on Sunday. There were also 100 cases from Cabo Delgado, 51 from Gaza, 35 from Niassa, 30 from Manica, 12 from Nampula, 12 from Zambezia, and five from Tete.

The Ministry reported that, in the same 24 hour period, 25 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (20 in Maputo, three in Inhambane and two in Matola), but 33 new patients were admitted (28 in Maputo, two in Cabo Delgado, two in Zambezia and one in Niassa).

316 people are currently under medical care in the Covid-19 wards – 249 (78.8 per cent) in Maputo, 16 in Sofala, 13 in Matola, 12 in Zambezia, eight in Tete, six in Inhambane, five in Gaza, two each in Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula, and one in Manica.

In the same period, a further 372 people made a full recovery from Covid-19 (162 in Inhambane, 145 in Zambezia and 65 in Nampula). This brings the total number of recoveries to 27,162, which is 60.9 per cent of all those diagnosed in Mozambique with Covid-19.

The number of active Covid-19 cases continues to rise, and as of Sunday it stood at 16.974. These cases were distributed as follows: Maputo city, 9,147 (53.9 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 2,417; Sofala, 1,398; Gaza, 1,235; Niassa, 531; Manica, 513; Inhambane, 507; Cabo Delgado, 470; Nampula, 309; Zambezia, 233 and Tete, 214.

Source: AIM