Sudden jump in number of Covid-19 deaths

Maputo, 17 Jan (AIM) – The number of deaths in Mozambique from the Covid-19 respiratory disease made a sudden jump on 16 January, when the health authorities reported 18 victims.

Prior to this, the largest number of deaths reported in a single 24 hour period day was six. But the fact that the deaths were reported together, does not mean that they all happened on the same day. According to a Ministry of Health press release, three of the victims were declared dead last Monday, two on Wednesday, five on Thursday, five on Friday and three on Saturday.

All the dead were Mozambican citizens. 17 died in Maputo city health units, and one in Zambezia province. Ten were men and eight were women. Eight of the victims were over 65 years old, two were aged between 55 and 64, four between 45 and 55, and four were under 45 years old.

This brings the total Mozambican death toll from Covid-19 to 234. Of the deaths 188 (80.3 per cent) occurred in Maputo city.

The Ministry release added that 858 new cases of the disease were reported on Saturday - the second highest total ever, surpassed only by the 879 reported on 9 January.

Since the start of the pandemic, 301,754 people have been tested for the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, 2,894 of them in the previous 24 hours. Of the samples tested, 988 were from Maputo city, 539 from Cabo Delgado, 400 from Maputo province, 245 from Manica, 244 from Gaza, 176 from Inhambane, 121 from Sofala, 91 from Nampula, 84 from Niassa, and six from Zambezia. No tests were reported from Tete province.

2,036 of the tests gave negative results, and 858 people tested positive for the coronavirus. Thus 29.6 per cent of the tests were positive. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 25,862. 822 of the new cases have been confirmed as Mozambicans, and the nationality of the other 36 cases has yet to be ascertained.

435 of the cases were men or boys and 423 were women or girls. 94 were children under the age of 15, and 41 were over 65 years old. In 31 cases, no age information was available.

The latest figures confirm that Maputo remains the epicentre of the Mozambican Covid-19 epidemic, 298 of the new cases were from Maputo city and 208 from Maputo province. Thus Maputo city and province between them accounted for 59 per cent of the cases reported on Saturday. There were also 117 cases from Manica, 113 from Gaza, 54 from Niassa, 28 from Sofala, 24 from Cabo Delgado, 14 from Nampula and two from Zambezia.

In the previous 24 hours, just three Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (all in Maputo city), but 62 new cases were admitted (61 in Maputo and one in Zambezia). There are now 205 people under medical care in the Covid-19 isolation wards – the highest figure ever. 172 are in Maputo (84 per cent of the total), seven are in Tete, six in Zambezia, five in Manica, five in Nampula, three in Sofala, three in Inhambane, two in Matola, one in Cabo Delgado, and one in Gaza. Niassa remains the only province where nobody has been hospitalised with Covid-19.

The Ministry also reported that, over the same 24 hour period, a further 144 people have made a full recovery from Covid-19 (136 from Maputo city, and eight from Zambezia). This brings the number of recoveries to 18,515 – which is 71.6 per cent of all those in Mozambique infected with the coronavirus.

Since the number of new cases far outstrips the number of recoveries, the number of active Covid-19 cases is also growing sharply. There are now 7,109 active cases, distributed as follows: Maputo city, 3,372 (47.4 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 1,244; Manica, 505; Sofala, 379; Gaza, 302; Niassa, 271; Zambezia, 268; Cabo Delgado, 248; Inhambane, 204; Nampula, 203; Tete, 113.
(AIM)