Mozambique to revise criteria for declaring a Covid-19 patient fully recovered

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Mozambique to revise criteria for declaring a Covid-19 patient fully recovered

5:30 CAT | 31 Jul 2020

Foto-Notícia-30-07-2020-Samo-Gudo-1024x682

Photo: MISAU

Mozambique has one of the lowest levels of recovery of patients infected with the new coronavirus in Africa and worldwide, accounting for only 35 percent of the total 1,808 cases reported since the beginning of the pandemic.

The African continent and the world overall have recovery rates of 61 and 63 percent respectively.

This, said the deputy director-general of the National Institute of Health, Eduardo Samo Gudo, on Thursday afternoon (30-07), was because of the criteria used for declaring patients recovered or cured.

Speaking during the Covid-19 data update press conference, Samo Gudo explained that, while Mozambique continued to use the criteria of double testing before declaring patients free of the virus, the WHO and many other countries required only the disappearance of the symptoms of the disease.

“Mozambique still uses the recovery criterion based on two tests after 14 days of the declaration of an individual as a patient of Covid-19. Other countries and the WHO no longer use this criterion, [declaring a Covid-19 patient fully recovered] based only on the disappearance of the symptoms,” Samo Gudo said. He explained that the country was currently working towards adopting these new criteria, which specify that an individual can be declared recovered ten days after the disappearance of symptoms, without undergoing any further testing.

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Figures presented at the Thursday press conference indicate that the country has registered 60 more persons infected with the new coronavirus, increasing the cumulative total to 1,808 patients, of which 1,635 are locally transmitted and 173 imported.

According to Rosa Marlene, national director of public health at MISAU, of the total new cases 54 are national citizens and six foreigners – four Malawians and two Indians.

These results are from a group of 949 samples tested in the previous 24 hours in national public sector laboratories, most of which come from active surveillance and tracking of positive case contacts.

In terms of location, three are in Cabo Delgado, 19 in Nampula, three in Zambézia, six in Sofala and one in Gaza. Maputo province has 19 and the city of the same name has nine.

Regarding those recovered, Rosa Marlene said that 22 more were registered, bringing the cumulative total to 616 countrywide. The number of hospitalised patients meanwhile dropped from nine to eight, the discharged patient being in the province of Inhambane.

By Thursday, the country had registered 1,808 Covid-19 cases, with 616 recovered and 11 fatalities, plus two more from other causes.

Source: Ministry of Health (MISAU), Mozambique.