COVID19: Cyprus’ one new case is a repatriate returning from Bulgaria

After lifting its ban on commercial flights on June 9, Cyprus detected its first case of COVID-19 from a repatriate arriving the day before from Bulgaria, a country ranked as low risk, health authorities said Wednesday.

According to the Health Ministry, the positive case was among 474 tests on passengers and repatriations.

“This is a person from a Category A country, who was identified as part of random testing of passengers at airports,” said the Health Ministry.

Tourists from Category A countries do not need to provide a certificate to prove they are COVID-19 negative while visitors from Category B countries need to have taken a test 72 hours before arriving in Cyprus.

Category A countries include Greece, Germany, Norway, Finland, Hungary and Austria.

According to the epidemiological data the positive coronavirus case was identified after 1,405 laboratory diagnoses.

Wednesday’s case followed two more infections found on Tuesday bringing the total number of COVID-19 cases to 991 plus 19 deaths.

The Health Ministry said that according to epidemiological data, no cases were detected after testing 23 samples from contact tracing of known cases and 235 samples were negative from private initiative.

Also coming back negative was 277 samples from the general hospital microbiology labs, as were 272 tests on people belonging to special groups referred by their GPs through public health centres.

Some 124 tests were negative from samples of employees who have recently returned to work after lockdown such as gyms and museums.

No patients are currently being treated in an Intensive Care Unit.

The last COVID-19 patient, an 80-year-old man, treated at Famagusta General, the coronavirus referral hospital, was discharged on Monday.