COVID19: 3 deaths include 37 year old, cases on the rise

Cyprus reported three coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, as well as an increase in new daily infections to 573, while hospitalisations seem to be tapering off, dropping to 263.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that two men died, aged 60 and 85, as well as a 37 year old woman, one of the youngest victims of the virus.

This raised the death toll for August to 23 and to 447 since the pandemic started in March last year.

The ministry said that the number of patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment in state hospitals dropped by 15 from Monday to 263, of whom 87 are critical, 12 less than the day before.

The bulletin said that 50 patients remain intubated, while 88% of all hospitalisations involve people who have not been vaccinated.

The PCR and antigen rapid testing increased to 62,555 from Monday’s 42,427, just above last Saturday’s 61,888.

Based on the 573 new infections, 127 more than the day before, the testing total generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.92%, down from Monday’s 1.05%, and below the high-risk threshold of 1.00%.

 

Infections to date reach 107,000

This raised the total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections during the past 17 months to 107,001.

Of the new cases, 83 were discovered through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, ten passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 110 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 370 new cases were identified from rapid tests, of whom 90 were from the national testing programme, available only to those who have been vaccinated or recovered from earlier infection.

Of these 28 were in Limassol, 28 in Nicosia, 10 in Paphos, 9 in Famagusta district and 7 in Larnaca.

Four people tested positive among 672 samples from staff and residents at retirement homes, three soldiers serving in the National Guard and one person from tests at closed institutions and special homes.

All 394 random rapid tests of passengers arriving at both airports had negative results.