Four people died of the coronavirus on Friday, including a 43 year old, despite improving epidemiological data of the last few days, with the number of new cases and hospitalisations at 238 and 133, respectively, almost unchanged from the day before.
The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin four men, aged 43 to 85, were the latest victims of the pandemic, raising the September death toll to nine in just three days.
To date, 512 people have died from the virus, of whom 331 were men (64%) and 181 women. The average age dropped slightly to 76.4 years.
August was the worst month on record with 80 deaths. The previous record was shared in January and last December with 76 deaths each.
The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that 133 patients are currently admitted in state hospitals for treatment, of whom 44 are in serious condition.
This is marginally down from 134 and 45, respectively, reported the previous day, as these figures had been improving all week.
Meanwhile, 16 patients remain intubated, three less than the previous day, while 82% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.
A further 16 patients are considered post-Covid, having recovered from the virus, but remain intubated and in a serious state.
Infected total revised up
The total number of all SARS-CoV-2 infections since the pandemic started in March last year was revised up by about 2,000 earlier on Friday and rose to 116,326.
Some 59,969 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, 7,000 more than the day before.
With an increase in testing and a marginally higher number of 238 new infections, three more than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ improved and dropped further to 0.40% from the previous day’s 0.45% and below the high-risk threshold of 1%.
Of the new cases, eight passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 69 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.
A further 121 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 40 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections. Of these, 15 were in Nicosia, 8 in Limassol, 6 in Famagusta district, 5 in Larnaca and 4 in Paphos.
Only two of the 693 samples of staff and residents at retirement homes tested negative.
All of the 210 random rapid tests on passengers arriving at both airports were negative, as were 69 samples from tourists sponsored by the hoteliers’ association.
