COVID19: New cases dip further, more patients

New coronavirus cases continued to drop slightly in Cyprus, dipping to 727 on Sunday, from 789 the day before, as the number of hospitalisations continued to rise, reaching 276 from Saturday’s 259.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that two more people died due to COVID-19, raising the toll for July to 25 and 403 since the pandemic started in March 2020

The latest victims of the virus were a 76 year old man and an 83 year old woman. Both died in Limassol General hospital.

The bulletin added that of the 276 patients admitted in five state hospitals, 71 were critical, two more than Saturday and 63 on Friday. It said that 88.8% of patients have not been inoculated.

In all, 73,053 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted on Sunday, about 1,000 more than the previous day.

Based on the 727 new cases and the total of all tests, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 1.00%, equal to the marker high-risk level, which had peaked at above 2% last week.

Sunday’s new SARS-CoV-2 cases pushed the total infections for the past 16 months to 97,718.

With a low sampling rate of only 56 tests, only one positive test resulted from the contact tracing method, while 9 new infections were recorded from PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports.

Some 114 positive test results came from private lab and hospital tests, while a further 603 were diagnosed from the national rapid test programme.

Of these, 181 were in Nicosia with a test positivity rate of 0.74%, 148 in Limassol (0.96%), 92 in Larnaca (0.93%), 70 in Paphos (0.86%) and 63 in Famagusta district (1.07%).

Of the 232 tests of staff and residents at retirement homes, 13 tested positive.