Mozambique: MISA concerned at disappearance of journalist Arlindo Chissale
Mozambique: Most new Covid-19 cases are from Maputo – AIM report
5:07 CAT | 22 Sep 2020
Source: MISAU
The Mozambican Ministry of Health on Monday once again warned that the rising number of cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease, particularly in Maputo city and province, poses a threat, not only to public health, but also to the country’s social and economic stability.
Speaking at a Maputo press conference, the Deputy National Director of Public Health, Benigna Matsinhe, said “we are failing in compliance with preventive measures. We can be sure that, unless there is a change in behaviour, we shall continue to witness a certain pressure on our health system”.
The system faces its greatest challenge in the capital, with a real threat that hospitals will in the fairly near future run out of space in the isolation wards required for Covid-19 patients. In no other part of the country is there similar pressure.
Matsinhe said that, in the last three weeks, 2,996 infections with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 have been diagnosed. This is 143 cases a day, and 43 per cent of all cases notified since the first case was diagnosed on 22 March. Over the same period the number of Covid-19 patients hospitalised has doubled, and the number of deaths has increased by 30 per cent.
Matsinhe announced the death of another Covid-19 patient in Maputo, bringing the total known death toll to 44. The latest victim was a 70 year old Mozambican man, hospitalised in a Maputo hospital. He was diagnosed with Covid-19 on Friday and died on Saturday.
Since the start of the pandemic, 125,633 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 848 of them in the previous 24 hours. All the tests were done in public facilities.
Of the samples tested, 228 were from Maputo city, 194 from Zambezia, 152 from Maputo province, 114 from Tete, 83 from Gaza, 46 from Cabo Delgado, 11 from Inhambane, 10 from Manica, nine from Nampula and one from Niassa.
707 of these tests were negative, and 141 people tested positive for the coronavirus, pushing the total number of positive cases since the start of the pandemic to 6,912. Matsinhe said all the new cases are Mozambican citizens. 71 are men or boys and 70 are women or girls. Nine are children under the age of five and six are over 65 years old.
The trend of recent weeks continues, with the vast majority of the new cases coming from Maputo city (94) and Maputo province (23). There were also ten cases from Zambezia, seven from Gaza, five from Tete and two from Manica.
In accordance with standard Health Ministry procedure, all the new cases are in home isolation, and their contacts are being traced.
Over the same 24 hour period, there was a surge in hospitalisations. 24 new patients were admitted to Maputo city isolation wards, and only two (also in Maputo) were discharged. 56 patients are now under medical care in isolation wards – 53 of them in Maputo city, two in Gaza and one in Zambezia. Matsinhe said this means that almost half of all beds prepared for Covid-19 patients in the capital are now occupied.
She added that a further 116 patients have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (54 in Maputo province, 38 in Maputo city, 15 in Nampula and nine in Tete). This brings the total number of recoveries to 3,738, which is 54 per cent of all those diagnosed with the coronavirus in Mozambique.
As of Monday, the geographical breakdown of all 6,912 positive cases, by the provinces where they were diagnosed was as follows: Maputo city, 2950; Maputo province, 1,253; Cabo Delgado, 690; Nampula, 576; Zambezia, 339; Gaza, 276; Sofala, 209; Niassa, 188; Tete, 182; Inhambane, 144; Manica, 105.
The main Covid-19 statistics for Mozambique were, on Monday (September 21): 6,912 confirmed cases, of whom 3,738 have made a complete recovery, and 3,126 are active cases. 48 Covid-19 patients have died, 44 from the disease and four from other causes.
Maputo city alone has 2,950 cases, of whom 820 have recovered, and 1,965 are active cases. The city thus accounts for 63 per cent of active cases.
Source: AIM
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