Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Saturday reported a further 89 new cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
According to a Saturday press release from the Ministry of Health, 52 of the new cases were women and 37 were men. Ten were children under 15 years old, and the oldest case was 75 years old. 78 were Mozambican citizens and 11 were foreigners (as is normal practice, their nationalities were not disclosed).
As has become the norm this month, the great majority of the new cases were from southern Mozambique. 86.5 per cent were from the four southern provinces (33 from Gaza, 23 from Maputo city, 15 from Maputo province and six from Inhambane). There were also nine cases from Sofala, two from Nampula and one from Tete.
Since the start of the pandemic, 1,344, 763 people have been tested in Mozambique for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 680 of them in the previous 24 hours. 591 of these tests yielded negative results, and the 89 that tested positive raised the total number of positive cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 227,616.
The positivity rate (the percentage of people tested found to be carrying the virus) fell from 13.44 per cent on Thursday to 11.96 per cent on Friday before rising again, to 13.09 per cent, on Saturday.
Three Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital on Saturday, two in Maputo and one in Gaza, and one new case was admitted, in Maputo. The number of people receiving medical care in the Covid-19 wards rose from 15 on Thursday to 16 on Friday, and then fell to 14 on Saturday - eight in Maputo, five in Matola and one in Inhambane. Four of these patients were in intensive care, receiving supplementary oxygen.
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No deaths from Covid-19 were reported on Friday or Saturday, and so the total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique remained 2,212.
There were also no recoveries from the disease on Saturday. The total number of recoveries remained 224,784, which is 98.76 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.
The number of active cases of Covid-19 fell from 533 on Thursday to 527 on Friday, then rose to 616 on Saturday. The geographical distribution of the cases was as follows: Maputo city, 228; Maputo province, 192; Gaza, 69; Inhambane, 56; Cabo Delgado, 22; Sofala, 19; Nampula, 13; Tete, eight; Zambezia, six; and Niassa, three. There were no active cases in Manica.
The Ministry also reported that in the previous 24 hours a further 8,178 people were vaccinated against Covid-19. 14,486.870 people have now been fully vaccinated against the disease, which is 95.3 per cent of all citizens aged 18 and above.
