Cyprus Covid-19 vaccination centre

COVID19: 1 death with fewer patients and cases

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One person died of the coronavirus on Thursday, with the number of new cases and hospitalisations inching lower in Cyprus to 235 and 134, respectively.

An 83 year old woman was the latest victim of the pandemic raising the death toll during the past 18 months to 508, of whom 327 were men (64%) and 181 women, with an average age of 76.5 years.

Wednesday saw four deaths, following the record 80 in August. The previous record was shared in January and last December with 76 deaths each.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that 134 patients are currently admitted in state hospitals for treatment, of whom 45 are in serious condition.

This is down from 137 and 49, respectively, reported the previous day, as these figures had been improving all week.

Meanwhile, 19 patients remain intubate, one more than the previous day, while 79% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.

A further 17 patients are considered post-Covid, having recovered from the virus, but remain intubated and in a serious state.

The total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections since the pandemic started in March last year rose to 114,366.

Some 52,758 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, 8,000 more than the day before.

With a lower number of 235 new infections, 52 less than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ improved and dropped further to 0.45% from the previous day’s 0.57% and below half the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, 18 were discovered through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, nine passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 48 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 115 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 45 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

Of these, 17 were in Nicosia, 13 in Limassol, 6 in Larnaca, 4 in Paphos and 3 in Famagusta district.

Only two of the 652 samples of staff and residents at retirement homes tested negative.

All of the 102 random rapid tests on passengers arriving at both airports were negative, as were 62 samples from tourists sponsored by the hoteliers’ association.