COVID19: One death, cases remain high

One person died of Covid-19 on Saturday, while Cyprus reported a 14% rise in new infections to 599 while hospitalisations dropped slightly to 285.

The Health Ministry said in its daily bulletin that an 84-year-old woman was the latest victim of coronavirus, raising the August death toll to 17 and to 438 since the pandemic started in March 2020.

And the average age of those who died from the virus is 77.1.

The number of patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment in state hospitals dropped by seven to 285, while critical patients were one less at 95, 50 of whom are on a ventilator.

The Health Ministry added that 90.53% of patients had not been vaccinated against Covid-19, up from 09.10% the day before.

The PCR and antigen rapid testing picked up again and increased to 61,888 from Friday’s 59,278 tests.

Based on the 599 new infections, 74 more than the day before, the testing total generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.97%, up on Friday’s 0.89%, and just below the high-risk threshold of 1.00%.

This raised the total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections during the past 17 months to 105,593.

Of the new cases, seven were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, 48 from contact tracing, 158 tested positive in private initiative and hospital tests, 276 from private rapid tests and 110 were diagnosed through the government rapid testing programme.

Of these, 39 cases were in Nicosia, 27 in Limassol, 12 in Paphos, 8 in Larnaca and 23 in the Famagusta district.

Up until August 6, 67.8% of Cyprus’ adult population is fully vaccinated and 75.5% got the first jab, according to the Health Ministry.

Paphos ranks first in vaccination coverage with 86.3% of its population receiving a Covid shot.