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Maputo — The Mozambican health authorities on Thursday reported a new record for the number of cases of the Covid-19 respiratory disease diagnosed in a single 24 hour period.

There were 2,123 people diagnosed on Thursday with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. The previous record was 2,025 cases, recorded last Saturday.

According to a press release from the Health Ministry, 31 Covid-19 deaths were reported on Thursday – a death toll in a single day exceeded only by the 32 deaths reported on Wednesday.

The latest victims were 19 men and 12 women. 30 were Mozambican citizens and one was a foreigner (the Ministry did not reveal his or her nationality). They were aged between 28 and 97. 18 of the deaths took place in Maputo city, six in Maputo province, three in Sofala, two in Tete and two in Manica.

The total Covid-19 death toll in Mozambique has now reached 1,221. Of these deaths, 343 (28.1 per cent) occurred this month, making July 2021 the deadliest month in the pandemic so far.

Since the start of the pandemic, 688,570 people have been tested for the coronavirus, 6,425 of them in the previous 24 hours. This is far and away the largest number of people tested in Mozambique in a single 24 hour period. 2.815 (43.8 per cent) of the samples tested were from Maputo city. There were also 859 from Inhambane, 570 from Tete, 697 from Maputo province, 337 from Sofala, 291 from Gaza, 241 from Zambezia, 192 from Nampula, 176 from Cabo Delgado, 145 from Niassa, and 102 from Manica.

4,272 of the tests yielded negative results, and 2,153 tested positive for the coronavirus. This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases diagnosed in Mozambique to 105,866.

Of the new cases reported on Thursday, 2,121 are Mozambican citizens, and 32 are foreigners. 1,193 are women or girls and 960 are men or boys. 216 are children under the age of 15, and 110 are over 65 years old. In 52 cases, no age information was available.

1,133 of the new cases were from Maputo city and 362 were from Maputo province. So between them Maputo city and province accounted for 69.4 per cent of the positive cases. There were also 252 cases from Inhambane, 137 from Tete, 69 from Sofala, 69 from Gaza, 45 from Zambezia, 38 from Niassa, 28 from Manica, 15 from Nampula and five from Cabo Delgado.

The national positivity rate (the proportion of those tested found to be infected with the virus) on Thursday was 33.5 per cent. This compares with positivity rates of 34.4 per cent on Wednesday, 32.9 per cent on Tuesday, and 40.4 per cent on Monday. So on almost every day for the past week a third or more of those tested were found to be carrying the virus.

Broken down by province, the highest positivity rates were found in Maputo province (51.9 per cent), Maputo city (40.2 per cent), Inhambane (29.3 per cent), Manica (27.5 per cent) and Tete (24 per cent). Once again the lowest positivity rates were found in the northern provinces of Nampula (7.8 per cent) and Cabo Delgado (2.8 per cent).

Over the same 24 hour period, 33 Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital (20 in Maputo, three in Tete and two each in Niassa, Zambezia, Manica, Sofala and Inhambane), but 57 new cases were admitted (34 in Maputo, six in Matola, six in Sofala, three in Inhambane, two each in Zambezia, Niassa and Manica, and one each in Gaza and Nampula).

Largely because of the 31 deaths, the number of people under medical care in the Covid-19 treatment centres fell from 494 on Wednesday to 487 on Thursday, The great majority of these cases – 341 (70 per cent) were in Maputo. There were also 44 patients in Matola, 39 in Sofala, 16 in Tete, 14 in Inhambane, 11 in Manica, seven in Gaza, six in Zambezia, five in Niassa, and four in Nampula. Cabo Delgado remained the only province with no Covid-19 patients hospitalised.

The Ministry release also reported that 715 people were declared fully recovered from Covid-19 on Thursday (709 in Tete and six in Zambezia). The total number of recoveries now stands at 80,773, which is 76.3 per cent of all those ever diagnosed with Covid-19 in Mozambique.

Since the number of new cases was around three times the number of recoveries reported on Thursday, the number of active Covid-19 cases resumed its remorseless rise – from 22,461 on Wednesday to 23,868 on Thursday. The geographical breakdown of the active cases was as follows: Maputo city, 14.720 (61.7 per cent of the total); Maputo province, 4,109; Inhambane, 1,348; Tete, 1,162; Manica, 872; Sofala, 509; Niassa, 498; Zambezia, 226; Nampula, 192; Gaza, 177; and Cabo Delgado, 55.

By Allafrica