COVID19: August death toll at 37, new cases below 400

Cyprus saw five new coronavirus deaths on Monday, as well as a drop in new daily cases to 381 and hospitalisations at 234.

The health ministry said in its Covid bulletin that four women aged 70 to 87 and a 49 year old man were the latest victim, raising the August death toll to 37 and to 461 since the pandemic started.

Some 44,374 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, about 30,000 more than Sunday which was a public holiday.

The 381 new infections, 216 more than the day before, and the total tests, generated a benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate of 0.86%, lower than Sunday’s 1.18%, and below the high-risk threshold of 1.00%.

At present, 234 patients are admitted for Covid-19 treatment in state hospitals, six less than the day before, of whom 85 are critical, one more than Sunday.

Of these, 46 remain intubated, unchanged from the previous day, and 81.2% of patients are unvaccinated.

The total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections during the past 17 months rose to 109,253.

Of the new cases, 18 were discovered through contact tracing, 9 passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 56 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 298 new cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, while 127 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infection.

Of these, 29 were in Limassol, 26 in Nicosia, 19 in Famagusta district, 12 in Paphos and 11 in Larnaca.

Some 279 random rapid tests at airports were all negative.