COVID19: New cases rise again, hospitals at capacity

Cyprus reported an increase in new coronavirus cases on Monday, rising to 528 from 470 the day before, with hospitalised patients remaining at a high of 225.

Of these 56 are in a critical state, just one less than on Sunday.

The health ministry said that one person died of COVID-19, a 62 year old man with underlying health issues and who had not been vaccinated.

This raised the April death toll to 17 and the figure to date to 273.

The health ministry added that 58,097 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on Monday, about 10,000 of which were from the schools’ sector as teachers and students in the upper gymnasium and lyceum classes need to renew their weekly negative test results in order to be allowed back to class.

With 528 new cases of SARS-CoV-2, the test positivity rate remains at 0.91%, below the ‘high risk’ level of 1.00%, with this rate spiking to 1.31% earlier in the week.

This also increased the total number of infections since the pandemic started to 52,033.

Of the new cases, 98 were identified through contact tracing, eight tested positive from among 3,456 samples taken from passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, while a further 102 were diagnosed from testing at private labs and hospitals.

A further 321 new cases were diagnosed through rapid tests of which 106 were Nicosia with a test positivity rate of 0.67%, followed by 75 in Limassol (0.75%), 52 in Larnaca (),87%), 28 in Paphos (0.84%) and 14 in Famagusta district (0.61%).

Of a total 1,157 tests on staff and residents at retirement homes, all returned negative, while 10,620 tests in the education (teachers, students and pupils) produced 26 positive cases,