Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Wednesday reported 20 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
This was the largest number of new cases in a 24 hour period since 3 March, when 20 cases were also recorded.
According to the latest press release from the Ministry of Health, the cases identified on Wednesday were 11 women and nine men, ranging in age from one year to 63. 16 were Mozambican citizens, and four were foreigners (the release did not disclose their nationalities).
The great majority were diagnosed in the far south - ten in Maputo province and eight in Maputo city. There was also one case in Inhambane and one in Nampula.
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,321,360 people have been tested in Mozambique for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 533 of them in the previous 24 hours (exactly the same number of tests as on Tuesday).
513 of these tests yielded negative results, while the 20 positive cases brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 225,539.
The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be infected with the coronavirus) rose from three per cent on Tuesday to 3.75 per cent on Wednesday.
Once again, the Ministry release reported no further deaths from Covid-19, and so the total death toll in Mozambique from the disease remains 2,201.
The hospitalization situation remained unchanged. No Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital, and no new cases were admitted. There were just four people undergoing medical treatment in the Covid-19 wards, three in Maputo, and one in Matola. Three of them were in intensive care, receiving supplementary oxygen.
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The Ministry reported four recoveries from Covid-19, all of them in Nampula. The total number of recoveries now stands at 223,228 - which is 98.98 per cent of all cases of Covid-19 ever diagnosed in Mozambique.
The number of active cases of Covid-19 rose from 90 on Tuesday to 106 on Wednesday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 36; Cabo Delgado, 29; Maputo province, 27; Gaza, five; Sofala, Inhambane and Niassa, two each; and Nampula, Tete and Manica, one each. Zambezia remained the only province where there were no active cases.
The Ministry also reported that, in the previous 24 hours, a further 8,708 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. The total number fully vaccinated was 14,090,865, which is 92.7 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.
