“We may be entering a difficult week” – in which the President must decide whether to extend the state of emergency or impose confinement

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“We may be entering a difficult week” – in which the President must decide whether to extend the state of emergency or impose confinement

3:39 CAT | 25 May 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic is clearly in the stage of community transmission, at least in some parts of Mozambique, @Verdade reports, as more than two dozen positive cases were diagnosed for the first time in a single day, triggering a cumulative total of 196 infected in the country, among them 92 Total oil workers.

There are now 62 independent transmission chains and a new focus has been identified in Nampula Province

“We may be entering a difficult week,” the Director of the National Institute of Health (INS) declared, perhaps anticipating the decision that President Filipe Nyusi has to take before May 30th: whether to extend the current State of Emergency or to reinforce prevention measures through confinement.

Two new records were set this Sunday (24). First, the INS carried out 516 tests in 24 hours; and second, 26 of them came back positive for the new coronavirus in a single day.

Three of the newly infected were diagnosed by health surveillance in Nampula, the largest province in the country, but without the source of the infections being known. They are a boy under 5 years of age, and two females, one aged 15-24 years old and the other between 25-34 years old. The new patients have no apparent connection.

A citizen aged 35-44 years old was diagnosed by active surveillance in Maputo province, also with no apparent relationship to any previously diagnosed case.

But Cabo Delgado province remains the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic here, with 22 new positive cases identified between Saturday and Sunday.

Two were in the headquarters of Palma district – one man in the 25-34 year old age group and one woman in the 25-34 year old age group.

Nine infected workers were diagnosed at the Total camps on the Afungi Peninsula: eight males (four in the 25-34 age group, two in the 35-44 age group and two in the 45-59 age group), and one woman aged 15-24 years.

Eleven new cases were diagnosed in the City of Pemba, six of them females: two in the 5-14 age group, one in the 15-24 age group, two in the 25-34 age group and one in the 45 – 59 age group. The remaining five are males: two in the 5-14 year old age group, two in the 25-34 age group and one in the 35-44 age group.

“We believe that there is no active transmission in the Afungi camp”

According to the Ministry of Health, the nine new positive cases diagnosed in the Afungi camps and the two identified in the city of Pemba are the result of the second round of re-testing which the French oil company workers are undergoing.

Dr. Ilesh Vinodrai Jani explained that, in the first round of re-testing of the 415 Total workers in Afungi, three new positive cases were diagnosed, while in the second round, with some tests still pending, nine positive cases were diagnosed “all of them with very low viral loads , indicating old infections”.

“These positive cases that show up in the second round of re-testing do not please us, but they also do not surprise us. We were expecting to find some cases,” the Director of the National Institute of Health said, emphasising “We do not believe there is any active transmission in the Afungi camp”.

Taking stock of the nine Covid-19 epidemiological weeks to date, the Director of the National Institute of Health noted that “last week, we tested 2,212 individuals, 39 of whom were positive (…) in the week up to the epidemiological week that begins today, we tested 516 individuals, of whom 26 who were positive, with a positivity rate above 5 percent, so we may be entering a difficult week”.

Dr. Jani noted that “we have more women and children, [and more] in the under-19 age group, compared to the previous week. Bearing in mind that we have an epidemic based on foci of transmission, this means that we will start to see a change in the demographic profile of positive cases. In the previous week, we had six (positive) individuals in the below-19 age group, and today we have 19 individuals in that age group. In one week the number of individuals has tripled”.

Mozambique “on the verge of commencing community transmission in some geographic locations”

“Last week, we had many transmission chains for the first time, and this week we continue to have many [more] transmission chains, many of them detected by active surveillance. So this epidemic based on foci of transmission seems to be well established in several provinces in the country (Maputo, Cabo Delgado, Gaza, Inhambane, Sofala, Tete and Nampula),” Mozambique’s chief epidemiologist said.

Dr. Ilesh Jani revealed that the sources of infection of the 36 transmission chains diagnosed between 10 and 16 May have not yet been discovered, as neither have the 26 transmission chains diagnosed between 17 and 23 May. “We continue to classify them as independent chains,” he said.

Pending a political decision, the Director of the National Institute of Health said the health authorities would “continue to observe the trend established two weeks ago, of the appearance of new transmission chains. This trend puts the country on the verge of the beginning of community transmission in some geographic locations”.
This leaves President Filipe Nyusi with few options regarding the measures to contain the pandemic in Mozambique in force until the May 30.