Until the middle of last month, the covid-19 pandemic seemed to evolve favorably in Angola, remaining below 30 cases per day, according to the same data that appears in the statistical bulletins of that university.
On December 2, 2021, for example, 25 positive cases were identified in 2,313 PCR tests, pointing to a 1 percent positivity rate on a day without a record of deaths.
But thirty days later, the scenario was completely different. On January 2, 2022, with a similar number of tests (1420, of which 142 PCR and 1278 antigen) 522 cases were diagnosed, which means that 37 out of 100 people tested positive, that is, 20 times more.
However, the number of deaths did not evolve in the same proportion, setting an average of 1.4 in the last 30 days, with the same record of several consecutive days without deaths, with December 27 being the day with the highest mortality rate (7).
A year ago (January 2, 2021), without having started the population's vaccination, which began in March, Angola recorded a positivity rate of 6.5 percent, with 40 positive cases identified in 618 PCR tests, in one day in which two deaths were also reported.
At the time, the Portuguese-speaking country was still experiencing its first wave of covid-19, with 407 deaths in 17,608 identified cases.
Angola is currently facing the fourth wave of the disease and health authorities last week confirmed the community circulation of the Ómicron variant, considered highly contagious, which is at the origin of the galloping advance in the number of infected, forcing the country to adopt more restrictive measures.
For the first time, in December, four-digit infection numbers were reached, reaching 1163 on the 23rd, 1945 on the 27th and a record 3090 cases on the 28th of last month, without this being reflected in a significant increase in the number number of deaths.
Already in the middle of the third wave, driven by the Delta variant, whose first cases were identified in Angola in July, several days with high mortality were recorded in the country, reaching peaks since the beginning of the pandemic, on 23 September (26 deaths) and in 1 October (30).
The Executive has linked vaccination with the reduction of mortality, launching successive appeals to the population to join the campaigns and to the need to complete the vaccination schedule.
As of Sunday, January 2, Angola had 82,920 cases of covid-19, of which 1722 resulted in deaths and had almost 4 million people fully vaccinated (12 percent of the target population).
So far 11,488,048 vaccines have been administered, of which 7,803,739 correspond to the first dose and 3,999,302 correspond to complete vaccination.
