COVID19: 2 deaths, new cases drop

Cyprus reported two coronavirus deaths on Thursday, an increase in hospitalisations to 276 and a drop in new daily infections to 402.

The health ministry said in its Covid bulletin that two men, aged 72 and 91, were the latest victims of the virus, raising the August death toll to 30 and to 454 since the pandemic started.

It said that hospitalisations were up 12 from Wednesday’s 264, of whom 95 are critical, three more than the day before. Of these, 51 remain intubated, unchanged from the previous day.

The PCR and antigen rapid testing dropped by 800 to 53,484 which, based on the 402 new infections, 82 fewer than Wednesday, generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.75%, down from 0.89% 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 107,887.

Of the new cases, 48 were discovered through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 11 passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 66 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 277 new cases were identified from rapid tests, of whom 94 were from the free national testing programme, available only to those who have been vaccinated or recovered from earlier infection.

Of these, 30 were in Nicosia, 25 were in Limassol, 14 in Larnaca, 13 in Famagusta district and 8 in Paphos.

All of the 339 samples from staff and residents at retirement homes tested negative, while four soldiers serving in the National Guard were positive.

All 77 random rapid tests of passengers arriving at both airports had negative results.