COVID19: Cyprus sees lowest case rate since June

Cyprus reported its lowest daily COVID-19 case rate of 136 since mid-June, although one more death was recorded, the 15th this week, raising the September death toll to 25.

Daily infections have not been this low since June 22, when Cyprus began recording three-digit cases.

The number of hospitalisations continued to drop to 106 from 117 on Friday.

Boosted by an above-average number of daily tests, the ‘test positivity’ rate continued to improve, dropping to 0.19% from 0.25%.

The Health Ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that a 64-year-old woman died on Saturday at Nicosia General.

This raised the national total to date to 528, of whom 339 (64%) were men and 189 women, with an average age of 76.4 years.

The number of patients currently admitted at state hospitals for treatment continued to drop to 106, of whom 43 are in serious condition, two more than the previous day.

Meanwhile, 16 patients remain intubated, while 83.7% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.

Another eight 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 117,831.

Some 70,628 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, around 14,000 more than the day before.

With a high number of tests and 136 new infections, six less than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate improved further to 0.19% and below the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, six were passengers tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 43 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 62 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies (51,614), and 25 were positive from the free national testing programme (14,430), available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

From the state rapid tests, 10 cases were found in Nicosia, six in Limassol, five in Famagusta, three in Larnaca and one in Paphos.