Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Tuesday announced a further 16 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
Over the past week, there have been 79 new cases of the disease. Although this is a considerable increase in the number of cases reported in April, it cannot yet be regarded as alarming.
Speaking last Friday, Health Minister Armindo Tiago said the increase in cases was "still minimal". This seems largely due to Mozambique's highly successful mass vaccination campaign.
According to the latest press release from the Ministry of Health, the 16 cases diagnosed on Tuesday were nine women and seven men, aged between 10 and 66. Eleven were Mozambican citizens and five were foreigners (the Ministry did not publish their nationalities). Six were diagnosed in Maputo province, four in Cabo Delgado, four in Maputo city, one in Sofala and one in Inhambane.
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,320,827 people have been tested in Mozambique for the coronavirus, 533 of them in the previous 24 hours.
517 of these tests yielded negative results, while the 16 positive cases brought the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 225,519.
The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be infected with the coronavirus) fell from 4.39 per cent on Monday to three per cent on Tuesday.
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.
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One Covid-19 patient was discharged from hospital in the central province of Manica, but two new cases were admitted, one in Maputo city and one in Maputo province. Four patients were under medical care in the Covid-19 wards, three in the capital city, and one in Maputo province. Three of them were in intensive care, receiving supplementary oxygen.
The Ministry release reported eight recoveries from Covid-19, five in Maputo province and three in Manica. The total number of recoveries now stands at 223,224 - 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 81 on Monday to 90 on Tuesday. The geographical distribution of the active cases was as follows: Cabo Delgado, 29; Maputo city, 28; Maputo province, 17; Gaza, five; Nampula, four; Niassa, two; Sofala, two; and Tete, Manica and Inhambane, one each. Zambezia was the only province without any active cases.
The Ministry release also reported that, in the previous 24 hours, a further 9,189 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. The total number now vaccinated against the disease stands at 14.079,234 - which is 92.6 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.
