Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Friday, the 14th this week, raising the September death toll to 24, while the number of new cases and hospitalisations continued to drop to 142 and 117, respectively.
Boosted by the higher number of daily tests, mainly due to the mobile units visiting high schools this week, the ‘test positivity’ rate continued to improve, dropping to 0.25%.
The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that a 70 year old woman who died on Thursday, was reported on Friday.
This raised national total to date to 527, of whom 339 (64%) were men and 188 women, with an average age of 76.4 years.
The number of patients currently admitted at state hospitals for treatment continued to drop, down by two from Thursday to 117, of whom 41 are in serious condition, four more than the previous day.
Meanwhile, 17 patients remain intubated, while 81% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.
A further nine 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 117,695.
Some 56,668 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, almost the same as the day before, including about 10,500 tests on high school students who started their classes on Tuesday.
With a high number of tests and 142 new infections, 32 less than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate improved further to 0.25% from Thursday’s 0.31% and below the high-risk threshold of 1%.
Of the new cases, 14 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 8 passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 41 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.
A further 60 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 19 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.
None of the 593 staff and residents in retirement homes tested positive, as did all of the 96 tests of guests hosted by the Hotels Association, and 199 random rapid tests at the airports.
