Cyprus reported 14 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday, which has the authorities worried as two of the new infections were traced to a beach party where 30 people took part.
The Health Ministry said that 3,775 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, with the positive results bringing the total coronavirus infections to 1,291, with the daily rate remaining at double-digit levels.
The ministry said that eight of the new infections were discovered from contact tracing, two from private initiatives and four were travel related.
Of the eight found from contact tracing, two were linked to a beach party where a cluster has developed, and both cases had symptoms related to the pandemic.
Two persons were asymptomatic and resulted from testing the contacts of an earlier infection. Four more persons were discovered from the contact tracing methods related to a family that contracted the virus.
In the case of the private testing initiative, one person was found positive linked to two earlier cases of workers in a plastics factory, while another person had the symptoms and was tested, only to be found positive.
From the travellers who were found positive for Covid-19, two were a Cypriot couple living in Manchester who had visited the island to visit relatives. They were tested upon arrival at Larnaca airport and were found to be asymptomatic.
Britain has been a Category B destination and any traveller must secure a negative Covid-19 test 72 hours prior to departure. However, if the passenger is a Cypriot national, then that person must complete the necessary contact information through the CyprusFlightPass platform (https://cyprusflightpass.gov.cy/ ) and be tested upon arrival, remaining in quarantine until the results are announced.
All arriving passengers may also be tested randomly at both Larnaca and Paphos airports.
The third case of a traveller tested positive for the coronavirus is a Greek permanent resident of Cyprus wo returned from Thessaloniki and was asymptomatic.
The fourth traveller was an Austrian who arrived via Chania, Crete, on Tuesday.
Cyprus reported one more death directly as directly linked to the Covid19 pandemic on Tuesday, raising the toll to 20 and the total deaths of all cases infected with SARS-CoV-2 to 27.
The latest death was a 77 year old man, reportedly with an underlying medical case, bringing the average age for all deaths to 71 years.
On Tuesday, the minister of health and the scientific advisory committee announced that the spread of the coronavirus seems to be thinning and the situation seems to be improving, allowing for a partial relaxation of measures for the port town of Limassol that had seen a disproportionate increase in Covid19 infections in recent weeks.
The health ministry also announced that three patients were released from the Famagusta General reference hospital, where all Covid-19 cases are admitted.
