COVID19: One death as cases dip below 100

Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Sunday, while new cases dipped below 100 to 99 and hospitalisation rates increased to 55.

The Health Ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that a 60 year old woman died taking the death toll since the pandemic started to 562, and October deaths to ten.

New daily cases dropped from 126 to 99, while the number of patients admitted at state hospitals for treatment increased from 51 to 55. Of these, 21 remain in serious condition, one more than the previous day.

Meanwhile, ten patients remain intubated, and 64% of hospital patients are unvaccinated.

Another nine patients are still 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 March 2020 rose to 122,362.

The number of PCR and antigen rapid tests conducted during the past 24 hours dropped to 38,627, over 6,000 less than Saturday.

With fewer tests and a drop in new infections to 99, 27 fewer than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ dropped to 0.26% from Saturday’s 0.28%, well within the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, nine were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 12 testing on passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 11 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 29 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 38 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All 76 samples at retirement homes tested negative, as did 1,350 test in restricted institutions and 127 random rapid tests on airport arrivals.