Mozambique suffers worst day yet in pandemic – AIM report

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Mozambique suffers worst day yet in pandemic – AIM report

5:36 CAT | 27 Jan 2021

File photo: Lusa

Mozambique on Tuesday suffered its worst day yet in the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Health, over the previous 24 hours, 1,274 people were diagnosed with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. This is the highest figure so far for a single 24 hour period, surpassing the previous record, set a week ago, on 20 January, when 1,126 cases were reported.

The Ministry also reported a further 10 deaths from Covid-19 – nine in Maputo city and one in Sofala. Eight of the victims were men and two were woman. Their ages ranged from 51 to 92. Six of the deaths occurred on Monday, and one each on Tuesday, Sunday, Saturday and last Thursday.

This brings the total number of Covid-19 deaths in Mozambique to 329. 163 of these deaths – almost exactly 50 per cent – have occurred this month. 261 of the deaths (79.3 per cent of the total) have taken place in Maputo city.

Also read: Here’s how much money has been allocated to Health since Covid-19 broke out in Mozambique – Carta

Since the start of the pandemic, 328,890 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 2,980 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 1,169 were from Maputo city, 364 from Maputo province, 280 from Cabo Delgado, 243 from Niassa, 201 from Inhambane, 184 from Zambezia, 179 from Gaza, 136 from Tete, 125 from Nampula, 56 from Manica and 43 from Sofala.

1,706 of the tests gave negative results and 1,274 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This is an alarmingly high positivity rate of 42.8 per cent – meaning that over 42 per cent of those tested were infected by the virus. For the tests reported on Monday, the positivity rate was 34.8 per cent, and on Sunday it was 27.2 per cent.

The total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique now stands at 34,055. Of the new cases, 1,252 have been confirmed as Mozambican citizens, and the nationalities of the remaining 22 have yet to be ascertained.

Over half of the cases reported on Tuesday came from the far south – 481 from Maputo city and 243 from Maputo province. Thus Maputo city and province accounted for 56.8 per cent of the cases, confirmed that the capital and the surrounding area remain the epicentre of the pandemic in Mozambique.

Also read: Can 20 million Mozambicans really become infected with COVID-19? – AIM

But there were also 170 cases in Niassa, 103 in Zambezia, 77 in Gaza, 71 in Inhambane, 57 in Tete, 29 in Sofala, 21 in Nampula, 19 in Manica and three in Cabo Delgado. Thus Covid-19 cases were reported from all 11 provinces.

The Ministry reported that, in the same 24 hour period, a further 50 Covid-19 patients were admitted to hospital – 28 in Maputo, 16 in Sofala, five in Zambezia and one in Cabo Delgado. The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 isolation wards now stands at 244 – 192 (78.7 per cent) in Maputo, 12 in Tete, 10 in Sofala, nine in Zambezia, six in Nampula, six in Matola, four in Gaza, two in Inhambane, two in Manica and one in Cabo Delgado. Niassa remains the only province where no covid-19 patients are hospitalised.

Also read: Covid-19 Maputo survivors tell their stories, praise the work of Polana Caniço – Carta de Moçambique

The Ministry also announced that a further 332 people have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (204 in Gaza, 86 in Niassa, and 42 in Zambezia). The total number of recoveries now stands at 21,343, which is 62.7 per cent of all those diagnosed in Mozambique with the coronavirus.

With the number of new cases greatly outstripping the number of recoveries, the number of active Covid-19 cases is increasing, and now stands at 12,375, the highest it has ever been. The distribution of the active cases is as follows: Maputo city, 6,015 (48.6 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 2,184; Manica, 751; Inhambane, 666; Sofala, 659; Gaza, 652; Zambezia, 475; Niassa, 468; Cabo Delgado, 235; Tete, 143; Nampula, 131.

Source: AIM