Cyprus reported another five cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday from 2,062 tests that were carried out, taking the total since the outbreak to 883 (including 10 in the British Bases).
Two cases were identified from 97 tests carried out on contacts of known coronavirus cases in the context of tracking and tracing.
Three people were positive from 1,009 lab tests conducted through private initiative.
From Wednesday’s data, no one was positive from 64 tests on employees in the retail food and beverage industry or care homes for the elderly.
Presenting the epidemiological data regarding new COVID-19 cases, Dr Marios Loizou of the Cyprus State Health Services Organisation said that Wednesday’s low number of new cases shows that Cyprus is on the right track which has put a smile on scientists’ faces.
He said the low number of new daily cases reported – there 4 on Tuesday – combined with news of scientists coming closer to finding working therapies and a vaccine raises hopes that Cyprus will be out of the woods sooner than expected.
However, he urged people to abide by the health guidelines and protective measures.
“Our ability to keep the virus in check and move on to the next stage of relaxing restrictive measures will depend on our behaviour”.
Some 13 people are inpatients at Famagusta General, which operates as the COVID-19 reference hospital. One of them is in the Acute Care Unit.
Their condition is described as stable, one patient was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday.
Four patients are breathing with the help of a ventilator, one at Limassol General Hospital ICU and three at Nicosia General Hospital ICU.
One more patient is being treated at Nicosia General Hospital’s ICU but is not on a ventilator.
The condition of all patients in the ICUs is described as “critical but stable.”
Globally, the number of coronavirus cases is close to 3.76 million and deaths are 260,000.
At the same time, however, 1.25 million people have fully recovered.
Britain on Wednesday surpassed Italy’s death toll with 29,427, making it the deadliest country in Europe.
Turkish Cypriot authorities have not reported any new COVID-19 cases since 19 April.
Authorities in the Turkish occupied north have reported 108 COVID-19 cases to date.
