COVID19: Cases and patient rates drop, 2 new deaths

Cyprus reported two deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday, as well as a mild drop in new cases to 668 and hospitalisations.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid report that the two deaths were both men, aged 75 and 89. The first had not been vaccinated, while the latter had received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine.

This raised the death toll for April to 52 and the to date figure since the pandemic started at 308.

The number of hospitalisations improved slightly, dropping to 279, down from 285 the day before, 292 on Tuesday and below the critical 300-level that was breached earlier in the week. However, the patients in a critical state remained at 75 for the second day, up from 73 on Tuesday, with the average age of Covid patients remaining unchanged at 58.6 years.

The health ministry said that 37,325 tests were conducted on Thursday, less than the 40,000-plus on other days, diagnosing 668 new cases of SARS-CoV-2. This resulted in a test positivity rate of 1.79%, down from the critical 2.07% on Wednesday which was based on 845 new COVID-19 cases.

The health ministry said that during the past 13 months, the number of infections rose to 65,233.

Thursday’s new cases included 65 identified through contact tracing, 187 from private lab and hospital tests, and 416 positive results from the national programme of antigen rapid tests.

Of these, 169 were in Nicosia with a test positivity rate of 1.44%, 112 in Limassol (1.46%), 62 i8n Larnaca (1.35%), 29 in Paphos (1.08%) and 20 in Famagusta district (1.22%).

Some 698 tests of staff and residents at retirement homes were all negative for COVID-19.