Maputo — Mozambican Health Minister Armindo Tiago on Friday said that the recent rise in the number of new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease is no cause for alarm.
Speaking in the southern municipality of Boane where he was launching an initiative to improve medical care for military veterans, Tiago said the number of daily new cases recorded "is still minimal".
For the past few weeks, new cases have been running at fewer than ten a day, but on Thursday 19 new cases were reported, and on Friday 15.
Tiago said the average positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the coronavirus that causes Covid-19) is about two per cent, and so the country is in a situation which could be regarded as stable.
"We are continuing to monitor the trends, and, based on the indicators, we are currently under two per cent", said the Minister.
The alert level, he added would be a positivity rate of five per cent "and the level for action is when we reach ten per cent. When we reach these numbers, we shall take adequate measures".
The Health Ministry's daily press release for Friday said that the 15 new cases recorded that day were nine men and six women, aged between 23 and 65. Nine were Mozambican citizens, and six were foreigners (the release did not reveal their nationalities). Six were diagnosed in Maputo city, five in Cabo Delgado, and four in Maputo province.
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,319,240 people have been tested in Mozambique for the coronavirus, 578 of them in the previous 24 hours.
563 of these tests yielded negative results, while the 15 positive cases brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 225,485.
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The positivity rate fell from 3.22 per cent on Thursday to 2.6 per cent on Friday.
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.
No Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital on Friday, and one new case was admitted, in Maputo city. This increased the number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 wards from four to five (four in Maputo city and one in Manica). Three of these patients were receiving supplementary oxygen.
The Ministry release reported a further two recoveries from Covid-19, both in Zambezia. The total number of recoveries thus rose to 223,190, which is 98.9 per cent of all Covid-19 cases ever diagnosed in Mozambique.
The number of active cases of Covid-19 rose from 77 on Thursday to 90 on Friday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 38; Cabo Delgado, 20; Maputo province, 14; Sofala, six; Gaza, five; Nampula, four; Manica, two; and Niassa, one. There were no active cases in Zambezia, Tete or Inhambane.
The release also reported that in the previous 24 hours a further 14,583 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. The number fully vaccinated against the disease now stands at 14,049,983. This is 92.4 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.
