Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Tuesday reported 151 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease, the largest number of new cases in a single 24 hour period since 27 January, when 301 cases were reported.
According to a Tuesday press release from the Ministry of Health, of the new cases 88 were women and 63 were men. 30 were children under the age of 15, and the oldest of those infected was 80 years old. 144 were Mozambican citizens, and seven were foreigners (as is standard practice, the release did not disclose their nationalities).
As has been the norm throughout this month, the vast majority of the cases - 90.7 per cent - were from the four southern provinces (55 from Maputo province, 46 from Maputo city, 20 from Gaza and 15 from Inhambane). The seven provinces north of the Save river (the conventional boundary between southern and central Mozambique) only contributed 15 cases - 11 from Cabo Delgado, two from Zambezia, one from Nampula and one from Sofala.
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,336,390 people have been tested in Mozambique for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 1,016 of them in the previous 24 hours. 865 of these tests yielded negative results, and the 151 that tested positive raised the total number of positive cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 226,631.
The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the virus) rose from 14.05 per cent on Monday to 14.86 per cent on Tuesday.
Four Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (two in Maputo and two in Matola) on Tuesday, but six new cases were admitted (three in Maputo, two in Matola and one in Manica). The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 wards remained 13, the same as on Monday. Eight of these patients were in Maputo, three in Matola and two in Manica. Four of these patients were in intensive care and were receiving supplementary oxygen.
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The Ministry release reported two deaths from Covid-19, an 80 year old man in Maputo and a 45 year old woman in Gaza. This brought the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique to 2,208.
10 people were reported to have made a full recovery from Covid-19, all of them in Cabo Delgado. The total number of recoveries now stands at 223,793, which is 98.75 per cent of of all cases of Covid-19 ever diagnosed in Mozambique.
The number of active cases of Covid-19 rose from 487 on Tuesday to 626 on Wednesday. The geographical breakdown of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 256; Maputo province, 231; Gaza, 80; Inhambane, 24; Cabo Delgado, 21; Nampula, four; Niassa, three; Zambezia, three; Manica, two; Sofala, two. Tete was the only province where there were no active cases. Maputo city and province accounted for 78 per cent of all active cases.
The Ministry also reported that in the previous 24 hours a further 3,346 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. The total number fully vaccinated now stands at 14,368,971, which is 94.5 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.
