COVID19: 1 death, infection rate kept at 0.30%

Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Wednesday, an increase in new infections to 230 and hospitalisations to 108, with the drastic increase in test lowering the infection rate to 0.30%.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that a 64 year old woman was the latest victim of the pandemic, raising the September death toll to 32 and the to date figure to 535.

The number of patients currently admitted at state hospitals for treatment dropped slightly to 108 from Tuesday’s 103, of whom 43 remain in serious condition, unchanged from the previous day.

Meanwhile, 19 patients remain intubated, one more than the day before, while 75% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.

Another 11 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 118,446.

A significant increase to 75,645 PCR and antigen rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, around 47,000 more than the day before, of whom 12,616 were high school students and teachers with 7 positive results.

With the significantly higher number of tests and 230 new infections, 104 more than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate dropped to 0.30% from 0.44% and well below the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, 20 were identified from contact tracing, linked to earlier infections, five were passengers who tested positive in PCR tests at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 50 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 120 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies and 35 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All of the 885 samples taken from staff and residents at retirement homes tested negative, as did 32 tests at hotels, while two of the 179 random tests at airports were positive.