COVID19: Cases above 300, youngest patient is 20

2725 views
1 min read

New coronavirus cases continue to gallop in Cyprus with 332 infections reported on Tuesday, up from 314 on Monday, while hospitalisations have doubled in a week to 59.

As the government considers re-introducing some measures to contain the spread of the virus, especially among young people, the head of one of the state hospitals said the youngest patient being treated for COVID-19 is 20 years old.

Amalia Hatzigianni, scientific director of the General Hospitals of Larnaca – Famagusta, said 26 people are being treated for COVID at the reference hospital, four of whom in the intensive care unit. The average age of the patients now stands at 49 with the youngest only 20 and the oldest 81.

Hatzigianni said the biggest problem is that young people have not been vaccinated and people under the age of 40 are not taking personal protective measures. She also said that the Indian variant of COVID-19 is six times more aggressive and spreads rapidly among younger people.

The Health Ministry said that there were no deaths attributed to Covid-19, making it the fifteenth day in a row.

The death toll since the pandemic started remained unchanged at 378 with an average age of 77. Of these, 14 were in June.

In its daily Covid bulletin, the ministry said Tuesday’s hospitalisation rate continued to worsen with 59 people being treated for Covid-19 in state hospitals, five more than the day before. The number of critical cases also increased, up three to 20.

The total number of infections during the past 15 months is now at 75,431.

A higher than usual number of 49,741 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on Tuesday, 12,000 more than the previous day.

Based on the total of all tests and the 332 new cases of SARS-CoV-2, the benchmark national ‘test positivity’ rate dropped slightly from 0.84% to 0.67%, in an effort to move away from the high-risk threshold of 1.00%.

Of the new cases, 13 infections were identified through contact tracing, four passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports tested positive, while 59 new cases were diagnosed from private labs and hospital tests.

A further 256 new cases of SARS-CoV-2 were diagnosed through the national rapid testing programme, up from 229 on Monday.

 

Nicosia most cases, Famagusta highest rate

Nicosia took the lead with 97 cases and a test positivity rate of 0.88%. However, Famagusta district, which recorded most of the clusters infecting night clubs and graduation parties at the Ayia Napa and the Protaras resorts had 33 new cases, but the highest test positivity rate of 1.19%, down from Monday’s high-risk level of 2.06% the day before.

Next was Limassol with 60 new cases (0.86%), followed by Larnaca with 36 (1.04%) and Paphos with just nine and low rate of 0.28%.

All 931 tests of staff and residents at retirement homes were negative, one tested positive among 561 tests at industrial zones, five soldiers serving in the National Guard were diagnosed with Covid-19 and a week-long onsite testing programme at large businesses and organisations discovered 8 new cases among 9,921 samples.