Brazil’s Vale Mocambique, SA, the World’s largest iron ore miner, has sent back home to Brazil more than 200 of its workers from Mozambique to protect them from being affected by the coronavirus, APA can report.
Vale sent an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft to transport more than 200 workers from its Moatize mine in Mozambique’s resource-rich western provinvce of Tete on Wednesday, barely hours after Mozambique confirmed its 5th coronavirus case.
The workers are expected to land at Belo Horizonte International Airport, in Brazil on Thursday.
A senior company source in the capital Maputo said the departing group has a high risk of contamination of Covid-19.
“But it is important to clarify that the return of this group was optional, as we still have Brazilian employees from Vale in Mozambique. Now we work from home, ”explained Vale’s Communication Department in Maputo.
The choice of hiring a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane, owned by the Ethiopian company, is due to the fact that most air connections to Mozambique are suspended due to the pandemic of the new coronavirus.
From Vale’s offices in Brazil, the group also informs that it is acting in accordance with the health and safety protocols established by the authorities and agencies of each of the countries where it operates and is monitoring the development of the situation.
Vale is has investing billions of dollars to mine coal from one of the world’s largest untapped reserves in Mozambique.
Meanwhile, Mozambique’s Health Minister, Armindo Tiago said that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Mozambique has risen to five.
Addressing usual press bruefing to update data on the coronavirus, the Minister of Health, the official said that the two new cases are imported.
However, Tiago did not elaborate further on the origin, nationalities, as well as their age groups, stressing that this will be the new posture of the Ministry he leads.
“Since the numbers tend to increase, we will not give more details, because it would take a long time to clarify each case,” he said.
But a media release from states that his is a male person over 30 years of age, of Mozambican nationality, residing in the city of Maputo, who returned from Portugal, having made a stopover in Austria and Switzerland, in the first half of March”.
It adds: “the other case was registered in an individual, also male, over 30 years old, of Mozambican nationality, residing in the city of Maputo, who returned from a trip to Dubai, having made a stopover in South Africa, in the first half of the current March, ”the statement reads.
The document adds that 61 people are being monitored by the Mozambican authorities in order to understand whether they have maintained direct contact with the five people or not.
It said that Mozambique has already screened a total of 377,128 from several countries with confirmed cases of covid-19.
“Since we started the process, we have accumulated 1,600 that were quarantined, currently 663 are in this process,” the document said.
The new cases announced on Wednesday were identified in private laboratories of hospitals operating in Mozambique, with the criteria required by the World Health Organization, WHO.
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