Cyprus continued to see a drop in new coronavirus cases on Monday, dropping to 611 from 773 the day before and a record 941 a week earlier, as the country went into its third lockdown for a fortnight in an effort to contain the spread of the virus.
The health ministry said that three people died of COVID-19, raising the death toll for the month to 45 and 301 to date, while the number of hospitalisation, already at a critical level, dropped by just one to 300 patients.
The government’s hopes for a recovery have been squarely placed on the vaccination programme, that is still moving slowly, with just 23.2% of the population with at least the first dose and a mere 8.3% having received both jabs.
The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that the three who died were a 48 year old man and an 89 year old woman, both of whom had not been vaccinated, as well as a 90 year old woman who had received the first of two vaccine doses.
So far, 198 men have died (66%) and 103 women, with an average age of 78 years.
Record 78 patients critical
On the other hand, of the 300 patients who are admitted for SARS-CoV-2 treatment in state hospitals, a record 78 are in a critical state, four more than Sunday.
The average age of patients receiving hospital care is 58.6 years, with the admission age now dropping to the 20s.
A total of 50,602 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on Monday, which based on the 611 new positive cases generated a test positivity rate of 1.21% and raised the total of all infections since the pandemic started to 62,960.
Of these, 60 were identified through contact tracing from earlier known infections, six passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports tested positive and 111 were diagnosed from private lab and hospital tests.
A further 432 rapid tests were positive for the coronavirus, of which 151 were in Nicosia (test positivity rate 0.96%), followed by 100 in Limassol (0.97%), 82 in Larnaca (1.31), 38 in Paphos (1.11%) and 26 in Famagusta district (0.93%).
By category ten tested positive from 1,395 rapid test samples taken from staff and residents at retirement homes.
