Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Tuesday again reported more recoveries from the Covid-19 respiratory disease than new cases and, as a result, the number of Covid-19 active cases is continuing to fall.
According to a Ministry of Health Tuesday press release, 1,890 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 (1,228 in Maputo city, 253 in Sofala, 165 in Inhambane, 145 in Gaza, 80 in Zambezia and 19 in Niassa). This brings the total number of recoveries in Mozambique to 121,449, which is 86.7 per cent of all those diagnosed with Covid-19.
1,033 new cases of Covid-19 were diagnosed on Tuesday: so there were 857 more recoveries than new cases. The number of active Covid-19 cases declined from 17,744 on Monday to 16,870 on Tuesday.
The Ministry release reported a further 17 deaths from Covid-19. These victims were 13 men and four women, all Mozambican nationals and aged between 32 and 91. Eleven of these deaths occurred in Maputo, two in Matola, two in Nampula, one in Niassa and one in Zambezia. The total number of Covid-19 deaths in Mozambique now stands at 1,748.
Since the start of the pandemic, 811,132 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 4,475 of them in the previous 24 hours. 3,442 of these tests yielded negative results, while 1,033 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 140,071.
Of the new cases identified on Tuesday, 572 were women or girls and 461 were men or boys, 111 were children under the age of 15, and 80 were over 65 years old. For 20 cases, no age information was available.
211 of the new cases (20.5 per cent) were from Maputo city, 189 from Niassa, 143 from Manica, 126 from Zambezia, 125 from Nampula, 78 from Gaza, 56 from Inhambane, 47 from Maputo province, 36 from Cabo Delgado, 11 from Tete, and 11 from Sofala.
The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected by the virus) on Tuesday was 23.1 per cent. This is slightly higher than the rates found over the last few days – 19.3 per cent on Monday, 18.8 per cent on Sunday, 22.7 per cent on Friday, and 21.9 per cent on Thursday.
For the first time, the three provinces with the highest positivity rates were all north of the Zambezi – Nampula (40.5 per cent); Niassa (40.2 per cent); Zambezia (34.2 per cent). The positivity rate is a good indicator of the intensity of the epidemic. In July, it showed that Covid-19 was raging through the southern and central province, leaving the north much less affected.
The situation has now been reversed, with Niassa and Nampula now the new Covid-19 hotspots. The lowest positivity rates on Tuesday were recorded in the central provinces of Sofala (4.9 per cent) and Tete (5.2 per cent).
The Ministry also reported that, over the same 24 hour period, 19 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (11 in Maputo, six in Matola, one in Inhambane and one in Cabo Delgado),but 31 new patients were admitted (18 in Maputo, five in Matola, three in Manica, two in Niassa, and one each in Sofala, Inhambane and Gaza).
The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 272 on Monday to 267 on Tuesday. 180 of these patients (64.7 per cent) were in Maputo, 21 in Matola, 14 in Zambezia, 12 in Niassa, 11 in Nampula, eight in Inhambane, seven in Gaza, four each in Tete, Manica and Sofala and two in Cabo Delgado.
The Ministry also reported that, over the previous 24 hours, 107,082 people had been vaccinated against Covid-19. 604,488 people have been fully vaccinated, while 1,642,919 have received at least one dose of the vaccine.