COVID19: One death, cases and patients stabilise again

Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Tuesday, with the number of new infections dropping to 60 and hospitalisations also down to 45.

The health ministry said that a 66 year old man died of COVID-19, the fifth person in June with the death toll since the pandemic started rising to 365.

News reported suggested earlier in the day that the latest victim was a doctor and an ardent anti-vaxer. Public discontent has been growing of a large number of health professionals, doctors and nurses who refuse to be vaccinated, criticised for what the general public has termed as being irresponsible.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that the number of patients dropped from 47 to 45, while the critical cases increased by one, to 19.

In all, 38,435 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on Tuesday which, based on the 60 new cases, down from Monday’s spike to 80, generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.16%, slightly higher than previous days, but still far below the high risk threshold of 1.00%.

Cyprus has had a total of 72,919 infections during the past 15 months.

Twelve of the new cases were identified from contact tracing linked to earlier known infections, while four passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports tested positive among 2,437 samples and 17 were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 from private lab and hospital tests.

A further 27 new cases were identified from the national rapid testing programme, of which the vast majority, or 17, were in Limassol with a test positivity rate of 0.28%, followed by four in Nicosia (0.04%) and one in Larnaca (0.03%). No new cases were recorded in Paphos and Famagusta district.

Tests in retirement homes and schools did not diagnose any new cases, while two persons tested positive among 601 samples in industrial zones, as well as one soldier serving in the National Guard.