Mozambique: New Covid-19 cases almost exclusively in the south – AIM

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Mozambique: New Covid-19 cases almost exclusively in the south – AIM

7:27 CAT | 07 Jun 2022

File photo: TVM

Over the past three days the Mozambican health authorities reported a further 133 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease.

At first sight the figure might appear alarming, given that a few weeks ago only a handful of new cases were reported a day.

But a closer look shows that almost all the new cases were diagnosed in Maputo, Matola and Gaza. Almost no cases were reported north of the Save River, the conventional boundary between southern and central Mozambique.

The number of active cases of the disease has risen sharply, and so has the positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be infected with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19). But these figures are also due entirely to the rise in cases in Maputo and Gaza.

The Sunday press release from the Ministry of Health reported 35 new cases (compared with 64 on Saturday and 34 on Friday).

Of Sunday’s cases, 19 were women and 16 were men, aged between eight and 70. 33 were Mozambican citizens, and two were foreigners (as is standard practice, the release did not disclose their nationalities).

21 of the new cases were from Maputo city, 13 from Gaza and one from Maputo province. Not a single case was diagnosed from anywhere in central or northern Mozambique. Hence 100 per cent of the new cases were from the south. On Friday, the figure was 97 per cent, and on Saturday it was 98.4 per cent.

Since the start of the pandemic, 1,330,662 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 353 of them on Sunday. 318 of the tests yielded negative results, and the 35 positive cases brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 225,968.

The positivity rate rose rom 5.02 per cent on Friday to 8.27 per cent on Saturday, to 9.92 per cent on Sunday.

The Ministry reported one Covid-19 death on Friday, a 39 year old man who died in Maputo city. No deaths were reported on Saturday or Sunday. The total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique now stands at 2,204.

On Sunday, no Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital and no new cases were admitted. Five people were under medical care in the Covid-19 wards, four in Maputo and one in Gaza. None of these patients were in intensive care.

18 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 on Sunday, all of them in Maputo province. The total number of recoveries now stands at 223,482, which is 98.9 per cent of all cases of Covid-19 ever diagnosed in Mozambique.

The number of active cases of Covid-19 rose from 197 on Friday, to 261 on Saturday, to 278 on Sunday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 117; Maputo province, 97; Gaza, 41; Inhambane, 10; Cabo Delgado, four; Nampula, four; Sofala, three; and Niassa, two. There were no active cases in Zambezia, Tete or Manica.

The Ministry release also reported that, over the previous 24 hours, a further 1,973 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. This brings the number fully vaccinated against the disease to 14,274,879, which is 93.9 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.

Source: AIM