Covid-19 cases leapt to 41 on Monday, suggesting that Cyprus is headed to a second week of near-record cases of 20-30 daily infections and justifying extending stricter measures to Nicosia and Limassol earlier in the day.
The past week saw the second highest rate of new SARS-CoV-2 cases since the pandemic started in March, with a total of 182 cases and three deaths.
On Sunday, health authorities reported 20 new cases of SARS-CoV-2, of which six were travel related, with the total number of cases breaking past 2,000 for the first time.
The health ministry said it conducted 2,610 tests, with half of the new cases identified through contact tracing linked to existing clusters. This raised the total number of infections in the Republic of Cyprus to 2,047.
Four of the new cases are university students. One is an infection from a University of Cyprus student, one if Frederick university and two more from the Cyprus University of Technology (TEPAK) in Limassol.
Two more cases are linked to a hair salon in Limassol, two are from family clusters and five more were infected from radiologists at Limassol General hospital.
Two more travellers were identified as contacts to earlier passenger arrivals from the UK on October 8 and from Ukraine on October 10, while five new cases were identified at Larnaca and Paphos airports – three arriving from Sofia, Bulgaria, one from Berlin and one from Moscow.
However, a rogue case of an uncooperative infection continues to trouble the health authorities. He had declared he was in self isolation for four weeks, has not accepted his test results and refuses to disclose his contacts. The authorities are pursuing the matter until his contacts are identified.
Furthermore, from ten tests conducted at Limassol General for pre-admission screening, six were nursing students from TEPAK who were tested positive.
Another is a 12-month infant, while a mother and her 17-day baby were also tested positive, having shown symptoms of high fever.
The health ministry said three patients are still being treated at Famagusta General, the Covid-19 reference hospital, two remain intubated at Nicosia General’s intensive care ward and two more patients are being treated at other hospitals.
