COVID19: Death toll rises as patient, case numbers stable

Cyprus reported five coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, more than on previous days, with hospitalisations and new daily infections stabilising at 264 and 484, respectively.

The health ministry said in its Covid bulletin that three women, aged 49, 67 and 96, and two men, 75 and 91, were the latest victims of the virus, raising the August death toll to 28 and to 452 since the pandemic started.

A 37 year old woman died on Tuesday, one of the youngest victims of the virus, with the health ministry saying that 84% of patients admitted for Covid-19 treatment are unvaccinated.

It said that hospitalisations were up one from Tuesday’s 263, of whom 92 are critical, five more than the day before. Of these, 51 remain intubated.

The PCR and antigen rapid testing dropped by 8,000 to 54,249 which, based on the 484 new infections, 89 fewer than Tuesday, generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.89%, down from 0.92% and 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 107,485.

Of the new cases, 50 were discovered through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, six passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 83 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 345 new cases were identified from rapid tests, of whom 122 were from the free national testing programme, available only to those who have been vaccinated or recovered from earlier infection.

Of these 28 were in Limassol, 20 in Nicosia, 15, in Larnaca, 10 in Paphos and 8 in Famagusta district.

One person tested positive among 237 samples from staff and residents at retirement homes, two soldiers serving in the National Guard and 38 persons from tests at closed institutions and special homes.

All 164 random rapid tests of passengers arriving at both airports had negative results.