Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Wednesday announced the diagnosis of a further 62 cases of infection by the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 respiratory disease.
According to a Wednesday press release from the Ministry of Health, since the first case was diagnosed, on 22 March, 42,551 people in Mozambique have been tested for the coronavirus, 806 of them in the previous 24 hours. 805 of these tests took place in public facilities, and only one in a private laboratory,
Of the samples tested, 237 were from Maputo province, 131 from Sofala, 113 from Tete, 83 from Cabo Delgado, 76 from Inhambane, 66 from Nampula, 50 from Manica, 43 from Maputo city, five from Zambezia and one from Niassa.
744 of these tests were negative, but 62 people tested positive for the coronavirus, bringing the total number of positive cases diagnosed since the start of the pandemic to 1,330. 60 of the new cases are Mozambicans, and two are Indian citizens. 75 per cent of the cases are male. Four are children under the age of 15, 11 are adolescents and youths aged between 15 and 24, 44 are adults aged between 25 and 64, and three are over 65 years old.
30 of the cases were from Maputo province – nine from Ressano Garcia, on the border with South Africa, 14 from Matola city, six from Boane and one from Marracuene district. Those tested in Ressano Garcia are almost certainly Mozambicans recently repatriated from South Africa.
Eleven cases were from Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado province, and five were from Nampula province (one from Nampula city and four from the port of Nacala). Four were from Cahora Bassa district, in Tete province, and two were from Gaza (one from the provincial capital, Xai-Xai, and one from Chokwe district).
There were also two cases from Beira, three from Inhambane city, and four from Maputo City.
In line with standard Ministry of Health procedure, all the new cases have been submitted to home isolation, and their contacts are being traced.
Seven Covid-19 patients remain hospitalized in isolation wards, five in Maputo city, one in Matola and one in Gaza. The Ministry release said they are all “suffering from various chronic pathologies, together with Covid-19”.
In the previous 24 hours, a further two patients have fully recovered from Covid-19, one in Cabo Delgado and one in Sofala. This brings the total number of recoveries to 375.
As of Wednesday, the geographical breakdown of all positive cases, by the province where they were diagnosed (which is not necessarily the same as the province where they are now living), was as follows: Cabo Delgado, 365; Nampula, 340; Maputo province, 217; Maputo city, 216; Tete, 43; Inhambane, 40; Sofala, 31; Zambezia, 30; Gaza, 25; Niassa, 16; Manica, eight.
The key Covid 19 statistics for Mozambique are now: 1,330 confirmed cases, of which 375 have made a full recovery and 944 are active cases. Eleven Covid-19 patients have died, nine of the disease itself and two from other, unrelated causes.
Source: Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique