Three more people died of the coronavirus in Cyprus on Thursday, raising the September death toll to 23, while the number of new cases and hospitalisations continued to drop to 174 and 119, respectively.
The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that two men, aged 64 and 99, as well as a 74 year old woman were the latest victims of the pandemic, with the total deaths since pandemic started in March 2020 now reaching 526.
The number of patients currently admitted at state hospitals for treatment continued to drop, down by 12 from Wednesday to 119, of whom 37 are in serious condition, three more than the previous day.
Meanwhile, 16 patients remain intubated, while 81% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.
A further 12 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 2020 rose to 117,553.
Some 56,956 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, 8,000 more than the day before, including about 10,800 tests on high school students who started their classes on Tuesday.
With an increase in number of tests and 174 new infections, 8 less than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate improved further to 0.31% from Tuesday’s 0.37% and below the high-risk threshold of 1%.
Of the new cases, 17 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 8 passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 38 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.
A further 82 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 29 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.
Four tested positive among the 839 staff and residents in retirement homes and one soldier serving in the National Guard, while all of the 44 tests of guests hosted by the Hotels Association, as well as 173 random rapid tests at the airports did not identified any new infections.
