COVID19: Cyprus cases spike, linked to UK travel, football team

Cyprus COVID-19 cases surged on Saturday with 25 new infections, triple the previous day’s seven while local clusters are growing, including Cypriot top-flight club Nea Salamina and cases linked to UK travel.

The Health Ministry initially said there were 15 cases but added another 10 later Saturday after results came in from tests at Larnaca club Nea Salamina where a player was found positive on Friday.

The 10 infections were detected among players and staff at Salamina after 59 samples were taken.

The 25 new COVID-19 cases were detected after conducting 2,950 laboratory tests with the total number of infections since the outbreak increasing to 1,590.

A majority of the non-football-related infections (nine) were part of the track and trace process of known cases and linked to several clusters.

Six were linked to a workplace cluster found on September 14 taking that number to nine in Larnaca.

Another positive case was a British woman who travelled with a Briton on the same flight to Paphos from London on 16 September.

Three other cases developed symptoms after travelling from the UK; a Russian woman living in Limassol who caught it from a friend while in London and two people who arrived from Britain on 7 September.

These three cases were detected via private initiative.

Among those who developed COVID symptoms, they complained of fever, cough, runny nose, and a sore throat.

The Ministry of Health said 9 positive cases were discovered after testing 75 samples from contact tracing, plus 6 were found via private initiative.

No positive cases were found after testing 141 samples in General Hospital Microbiology Labs, 1,397 tests on airport arrivals, 139 tests on people aged 18-40 in crowded areas, 234 samples taken after referrals from GPs and 423 tests on pupils and school staff.

Six patients are being treated at Famagusta General Hospital, one of them at the Increased Care Unit.

One more patient is at the Nicosia General Hospital ICU but is not connected to a ventilator.