COVID19: Cases dip below 900, patients spike at 139

New coronavirus cases in Cyprus dipped below the 900-marker dropping to 849 on Sunday, having breached this level three times during the past week with a record 993 on Thursday.

However, hospitalisations continued to rise, topping 139 patients admitted for treatment of whom 34 are critical.

This is up from 125 and 32, respectively, on Saturday, as Cyprus struggles to contain the spread of the virus, that has already placed the country in the ‘dark red’ zone according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) rankings.

The only good news, the Health Ministry said in its Covid bulletin that no deaths were attributed to Covid-19 for the sixth consecutive day, with the death toll remaining at two for July and unchanged at 380 since the pandemic started.

Some 63,665 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted Sunday, 6,000 less than the previous day.

Based on the 849 new cases, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate dropped to 1.33% from 1.39% on Saturday and the 2.16% high on Wednesday.

The benchmark high-risk level is 1.00%.

Sunday’s new coronavirus cases pushed the total of infections for the past 16 months to 84,272.

Of the new cases, five passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports were positive in PCR tests, 80 were diagnosed from private lab and hospital tests, while 764 were identified through the national rapid testing programme.

There were no contact tracing investigations over the weekend.

Limassol continued to diagnose most of the positive cases through the rapid test programme, with 232 cases and the highest test positivity rate of 1.66%.

Nicosia was next with 213 (1.04%), Larnaca with 116 (1.43%), Paphos had 93 (1.13%) and Famagusta with 79 cases (1.54%).