Mozambique: Record number of Covid-19 deaths reported in one day: Monday, February 1 – AIM report

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Mozambique: Record number of Covid-19 deaths reported in one day: Monday, February 1 – AIM report

5:32 CAT | 02 Feb 2021

File photo: Lusa

The Mozambican Covid-19 epidemic hit a new and grisly record on Monday, with the largest number of deaths yet recorded in a single 24 hour period.

According to the Deputy National Director of Public Health, Benigna Matsinhe, there were 19 deaths reported. But they did not all take place on Monday – which is because of delays in certifying cause of death.

Previously the highest number of deaths reported in a single day was 18 (on both 16 and 20 January).

The 19 victims were 16 men and three women, aged between 20 and 87. 18 were Mozambican and one was Portuguese. One of the deaths was declared last Thursday, two on Saturday, 15 on Sunday and one on Monday. 15 of the deaths took place in Maputo, one in Matola and three in Sofala.

This brings the total number of Covid-19 deaths in Mozambique to 386. Of these 306 (79.3 per cent) occurred in Maputo city.

Since the start of the pandemic, 347,710 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 2,885 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 1,223 were from Maputo city, 561 from Maputo province, 512 from Inhambane, 265 from Nampula, 171 from Cabo Delgado, 67 from Niassa, 51 from Gaza, 19 from Zambezia, six from Manica, five from Tete and five from Sofala.

2,079 of the tests gave negative results, and 806 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 39,460. As for the positivity rate, 27.9 per cent of those tested in the 24 hour period were carrying the coronavirus. This compares with 24.8 per cent on Sunday, 28.7 per cent on Saturday, and 27.9 per cent on Friday.

772 of the new cases are known to be Mozambicans, and nine are foreigners (but Matsinhe did not give a breakdown of their nationalities). The nationalities of a further 25 cases have yet to be confirmed.

422 of the cases are men or boys and 384 are women or girls. 48 are children under the age of 15, and 57 are over 65 years old. For 25 cases, no age information was available.

The vast majority of the cases reported on Monday were from the far south – 406 from Maputo city and 195 from Maputo province. Thus 74.6 per cent of the new cases came from Maputo city and province, confirming yet again that the capital is at the heart of the Mozambican epidemic. There were also 134 cases from Inhambane, 37 from Nampula, 15 from Zambezia, 13 from Niassa, three from Tete and three from Sofala. No cases were reported from Cabo Delgado, Manica or Gaza.

Over the same 24 hour period, eight Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (three in Maputo, three in Sofala and two in Zambezia). But they were greatly outnumbered by the 50 new patients admitted (22 in Maputo, 10 in Inhambane, nine in Matola, four in Sofala, three in Nampula, one in Zambezia, and one in Gaza).

There are now 326 people under medical care in the Covid-19 wards. 231 of them (70.9 per cent) are in Maputo. There are also 25 in Matola, 17 in Tete, 17 in Sofala, 12 in Inhambane, eight in Zambezia, eight in Gaza, three in Manica, three in Nampula and two in Cabo Delgado.

Matsinhe said that 204 of the hospitalised patients are male and 122 are female. 141 are elderly people, aged 60 and above.

She added that 151 of the patients are in a “moderate” clinical condition, 174 are seriously ill and 28 are in a critical condition. 202 are receiving oxygen and 15 are on ventilators.

14 of the patients are children, of whom four are seriously ill and eight are in a critical condition.

Matsinhe also announced that, in the same period, 638 people made a full recovery from Covid-19 (347 in Maputo province, 161 in Tete, 55 in Nampula, 46 in Maputo city and 29 in Zambezia). This brings the total number of recoveries to 24,993, which is 62.3 per cent of all those diagnosed with the coronavirus in Mozambique.

With the number of new cases still surpassing the number of recoveries, the number of active Covid-19 cases is inevitably increasing. As of Monday, it stood at 14,477 (up from 14,328 on Sunday), distributed as follows: Maputo city, 7,712 (53.3 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 1,985; Inhambane, 770; Manica, 754; Gaza, 752; Sofala, 730; Niassa, 700; Zambezia, 528; Nampula, 291; Cabo Delgado, 209; Tete, 46.

Source: AIM