Mozambique: Another Coronavirus Death and 103 New Cases

Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Friday announced a further death from the Covid-19 respiratory disease, and 103 new cases of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

A Health Ministry press release said that the latest victim was a 66 year old Mozambican man, hospitalised in Maputo city. He was diagnosed with Covid-19 on Wednesday, and died on Thursday. This brings Mozambique’s total Covid-19 death toll to 69.

The release said that, since the first case was diagnosed on 22 March, 151,813 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 1,806 of them in the previous 24 hours,

1,070 of these tests were administered in public facilities, and 736 in private laboratories. Of all the samples tested, 835 were from Maputo city, 308 from Cabo Delgado, 293 from Zambezia, 181 from Sofala, 62 from Maputo province, 57 from Gaza, 35 from Inhambane, 20 from Tete, 14 from Nampula and one from Niassa.

1,703 of the tests gave negative results, and 103 people tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the number of positive cases since the start of the pandemic to 9,742. 100 of the new cases are Mozambican, one is Brazilian, one Portuguese and one Indian. 53 are women or girls and 50 are men or boys. 12 are children under 15 years of age, and six are over 65 years old. No age information was available for two cases.

The majority of the cases – 63 – were from Maputo city. There were also 11 cases from Tete, 10 from Zambezia, nine from Inhambane, five from Maputo city and five from Gaza.

In line with standard Ministry of Health procedure, all 103 new cases are in home isolation, and their contacts are being traced.

Over the same 24 hour period, five Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital, but four others were admitted, all of them in Maputo city. There are now 40 patients under medical care in the Covid-19 isolation wards, 39 in Maputo and one in Nampula.

The Ministry release also announced that a further 260 people have made a full recovery from Covid-19 – 215 of them in Maputo city, 42 in Zambezia and three in Inhambane. The total number of recoveries now stands at 7,171 – 73.6 per cent of all those diagnosed with the coronavirus.

As of Friday, the geographical breakdown of all 9,742 positive cases, by the provinces where they were diagnosed, was as follows: Maputo city, 4,469; Maputo province, 1,672; Cabo Delgado, 723; Zambezia, 707; Nampula, 587; Gaza, 359; Tete, 353; Sofala, 271; Inhambane, 256; Niassa, 236; Manica, 110.

But of the 2,498 currently active cases, Maputo city and province account for over 87 per cent.

The main Covid-19 statistics for Mozambique now stand at: 9,742 confirmed cases, of whom 7,171 have made a complete recovery and 2,498 are active cases. 73 Covid-19 patients have died, 69 of the disease and four from other causes.