COVID19: Cyprus cases inch up, 2 deaths

Two people died on Wednesday, new coronavirus cases spiked to 77 and hospitalisations retreated further, as Cyprus prepared to lift all lockdown restrictions as of Thursday.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that a 69 year old woman and 78 year old man were added to the long list of victims from the pandemic, with the death toll in June rising to seven and in the past 15 months to 367.

Of these, 244 were men (66%) and 123 women with an average age of 77.4 years.

The ministry said that 43 patients are currently admitted in Covid wards, two less than the day before, while the number of critical cases were also reduced to 16, from 19 on Tuesday.

A total 39,124 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on the day which, based on the increase in new daily infections from 60 to 77, also generated a higher ‘test positivity rate’ of 0.20%, higher than Tuesday’s 0.16%, but still safely below the high risk threshold of 1.00%.

To date, Cyprus has recorded 72,996 infections of SARS-CoV-2.

 

New infections

Of the new cases, 29 were discovered through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 6 passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports tested positive, and 12 were diagnosed from private lab and hospital tests.

A further 30 infections were diagnosed from the national rapid testing programme, of which 13 were in Limassol (test positivity rate 0.18%), 8 in Nicosia (0.08%) and 4 in Paphos (0.13%). No new cases were recorded in Larnaca and Famagusta district.

There were no new cases in tests conducted in industrial zones, in the army and retirement homes. Only four infections were diagnosed among 5,092 tests among teachers and students in high schools.