Cyprus confirmed 10 more Covid-19 infections on Wednesday after 3,207 tests were carried out taking total cases to 1,484 since the outbreak.
Wednesday’s cases follow Tuesday’s 14, with the daily tally remaining relatively high, although most cases are ‘imported’.
Some 30 cases reported on Monday, found to be tainted have not been taken off the tally yet, pending a second negative test from the people involved.
The Health Ministry had confirmed that a batch of 30 tests was botched and requested people involved to take the test again.
On Wednesday, the ministry said that 26 out of 27 tests repeated were negative, with just one returning a positive result.
Six of Wednesday’s new infections had a travel history, while two more were immigrants from Syria who arrived through Turkey, entering the island through the Turkish occupied north.
Of those with a travel history, three cases arrived in Cyprus on flights from Greece, two from Mykonos were close contacts of a person found positive for COVID-19 who they had returned with from Mykonos on 20 August.
The third case flew in from Athens on Tuesday.
Two more cases involved a Lithuanian couple arriving for a holiday.
They told health authorities that before leaving Lithuania they had come in contact with a confirmed case and developed symptoms.
Authorities arranged for the couple to be tested.
The couple had arrived on 21 August and developed symptoms the next day.
The last case with a travel history, was a Spanish woman, permanently living on the island, who returned from Spain on 14 August.
The woman had self-isolated and taken the test some 48 hours before her quarantine was up. She is asymptomatic.
A total of 1,903 tests were carried out at Cyprus airports.
A footballer at Doxa FC who was also found positive after tests were carried out at the club. The player had reported symptoms.
According to the Health Ministry, six patients are now being treated at the COVID-19 referral hospital Famagusta General, one of them is in the Acute Care Unit.
One other patient is on a ventilator at Nicosia General’s Intensive Care Unit.