COVID19: No deaths, cases and patients slightly up

Cyprus said there were no deaths attributed to COVID-19 on Sunday for the second day in a row, with the number of new infections and patient hospitalisations slightly up from Saturday.

The health ministry said that after four people died because of the virus on Friday, the death toll for May rose to 34 and the total since the pandemic started to 346.

The daily Covid report said that the number of patients admitted for treatment edged up to 157 on Sunday, rising one per day from Friday, with the critical cases presently at 50, one less than the day before.

Some 63,798 PCR and rapid tests were conducted on Sunday, with 165 new coronavirus cases detected, maintaining the test positivity rate at 0.26%, with that level kept below the risk benchmark of 1.00% throughout the past week.

This raised the number of infections in the past 14 months to 71,064.

Saturday saw a higher number of 83,338 tests, as despite relaxing further Lockdown III measures from Monday, May 17, the weekly negative test result for students and teachers, as well as workers, remains mandatory.

The health ministry said that 23 of the new cases were diagnosed through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 26 tested positive in private lab and hospital tests, while 116 were discovered through the national rapid testing programme.

Of these, 50 were in Nicosia (test positivity rate 0.20%), 39 were in Limassol (0.24%), 19 in Larnaca (0.21%), 4 in Paphos (0.07%) and two in Famagusta district (0.04%).