Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Wednesday reported 118 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
This was the second consecutive day when the number of new cases exceeded 100. On Tuesday, 151 new cases were reported.
But this jump in new cases is not accompanied by any significant increase in deaths or hospitalisations. The new cases mostly seem mild, which could be regarded as a tribute to the success of Mozambique's mass vaccination campaign.
According to a Wednesday press release from the Ministry of Health, 63 of Wednesday's new cases were women and 55 were men. Their ages ranged from five to 92. 114 were Mozambican citizens and four were foreigners (as is normal practice, the release did not disclose their nationalities).
As has been the case throughout this month, the vast majority (90.7 per cent) of new infections came from the southern provinces - 44 cases from Maputo city, 42, from Maputo province, 13 from Inhambane and eight from Gaza. There were also eight cases from the northern province of Cabo Delgado and three from the central province of Zambezia.
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,337,359 people have been tested in Mozambique for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 969 of them in the previous 24 hours. 851 of these tests yielded negative results, and the 118 that tested positive raised the total number of positive cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 226,749.
The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the virus) fell from 14.86 per cent on Tuesday to 12.18 per cent on Wednesday.
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No Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital on Wednesday, but six new patients were admitted, four in Maputo and two in Gaza. The number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 wards rose from 13 on Tuesday, to 19 on Wednesday. 12 of these patients were in Maputo, three in Matola, two in Gaza and two in Manica. Six were in intensive care, receiving supplementary oxygen.
The Ministry release reported no further deaths from Covid-19. The total death toll from the disease in Mozambique thus remains 2,208.
63 people were reported to have made a full recovery from Covid-19, all of them in Maputo province. The total number of recoveries now stands at 223,856, which is 98.72 per cent of of all cases of Covid-19 ever diagnosed in Mozambique.
The number of active cases of Covid-19 rose from 626 on Tuesday to 681 on Wednesday. The geographical breakdown of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 300; Maputo province, 210; Gaza, 88; Inhambane, 37; Cabo Delgado, 29; Zambezia, six; Nampula, four; Niassa, three; Manica, two; and Sofala, two.
Tete remained the only province with no active cases. The four southern provinces accounted for 93.2 per cent of all active cases.
The Ministry also reported that in the previous 24 hours a further 4,310 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. The number now fully vaccinated against the disease is 14,381,292 - which is 94.6 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.
