COVID19: 1 death as patient, case number stabilise

Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Friday, as new daily cases and hospitalisations stabilised at weekly lows of 419 and 259, respectively.

The health ministry said in its Covid bulletin that a 90 year old man was the latest victims of the virus, raising the August death toll to 31 and to 455 since the pandemic started.

It said that hospitalisations were down 17 from Thursday’s 276, of whom 92 are critical, three less than the day before. Of these, 52 remain intubated, one more  from the previous day and 83% of patients are unvaccinated.

The PCR and antigen rapid testing increased by 700 to 54,173 which, based on the 419 new infections, 17 more than Thursday, generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.77%, slightly up from 0.77% 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 108,306.

Of the new cases, 7 passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 81 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 331 new cases were identified from rapid tests, of whom 84 were from the free national testing programme, available only to those who have been vaccinated or recovered from earlier infection.

Of these, 25 were in Limassol, 22 in Nicosia, 14 in Larnaca, 13 in Famagusta district and 6 in Paphos.

All of the 453 samples from staff and residents at retirement homes tested negative, while all 182 random rapid tests of passengers arriving at both airports also had negative results.