COVID19: 3 deaths, patients stable, rapid drop in new cases

Cyprus reported three coronavirus deaths on Sunday, with the number of hospitalisations stable at 286, while new infections dropped to 389 or nearly half of previous days.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that two men aged 83 and 93, as well as a 71 year old woman died due to Covid-19 complications, raising the death toll for August to 20 and 441 since the pandemic started in March last year.

The number of patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment in state hospitals increased by one to 286, while critical patients were one more at 96.

The health ministry added that 89.9% of patients had not been vaccinated against Covid-19, slightly down from 90.5% the day before.

The PCR and antigen rapid testing dropped up again to 35,196 down from Saturday’s 61,888.

Based on the 389 new infections, 210 less than the day before, the testing total generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 1.11%, up on Saturday’s 0.97%, and above the high-risk threshold of 1.00%.

This raised the total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections during the past 17 months to 105,982.

Of the new cases, four were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, nine were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 85 tested positive in private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 291 were diagnosed through the national rapid testing programme.

Of these, 40 were in Nicosia, 36 in Limassol, 21 in Larnaca, 10 in Paphos and 9 in Famagusta district.

Only two tested positive from 91 rapid tests of staff and residents at retirement homes, 34 from tests at enclosed facilities and four soldiers in the National Guard, while 353 random rapid tests on passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports were all negative.