COVID19: May is third deadliest month, cases drop

Two people died of COVID-19 on Thursday, making May the third deadliest month, while daily coronavirus infections dropped below 100 to 76, as health authorities push for a faster vaccination rollout.

The two elderly people, a 97 year old man and an 89 year old woman, raised the death toll for May to 38 and the to date figure at 350.

March recorded 25 deaths and 30 in February, while December and January were the worst months on record with 76 deaths each.

The health ministry’s daily Covid report said that 134 patients remain in hospital who are being treated for coronavirus in six state hospitals, significantly down from 148 on Wednesday, while the number of critical cases increased by one to 48, compared to 47 the day before and 49 on Tuesday.

The ministry said that 49,364 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on Thursday, near the same level of testing throughout the week, which when factoring in the 77 new cases of SARS-CoV-2 generated a ‘test positivity’ rate 0.16%, the lowest in weeks.

The total number of infections since the pandemic started is now 71,610.

The new cases included 15 identified through contact tracing of known infections, three passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports tested positive, and 15 new cases were diagnosed from private lab and hospital testing.

A further 44 new cases were identified from the national rapid testing programme, of which 12 were in Limassol (test positivity rate of 0.13%), 12 in Nicosia (0.09%), 7 in Larnaca (0.15%) and 4 in Famagusta district (0.17%). No new cases were reported in Paphos for the first time.

Two samples taken from 560 staff and resident at retirement homes tested positive for COVID-19, while 7,415 tests on high school students and teachers were all negative.