COVID19: One death as cases climb all week

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Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Friday, a drop in the number of patients to 57, but an increase in new daily cases, rising to 175 from 99 last Sunday.

Throughout the week, the health ministry said there were 166 new Covid-19 infections on Monday, 181 on Tuesday, 143 on Wednesday and 144 on Thursday.

The ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that the death toll since the pandemic started rose to 567, of whom 15 died in October.

It said that the latest victim of the virus was a 70 year old man, with males accounting for 361 of all deaths (64%) and females 206 (36%). The average age of all fatalities during the past 18 months was 76.1 years.

After a record 80 deaths in August, the number dropped to 40 in September, with ten days of no Covid-related deaths. So far, October has also seen ten days of no Covid-related deaths in Cyprus.

New daily cases increased from 144 to 175, while the number of patients admitted at state hospitals for treatment was reduced by seven to 57. Of these, 23 remain in serious condition, one less than the previous day.

Meanwhile, eight patients remain intubated, one less from the previous day, and 60% of hospital patients are reported as unvaccinated.

Another three 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 123,171.

 

55,000 tests

The number of PCR and antigen rapid tests conducted during the past 24 hours dropped marginally to 55,018, about 400 less than Thursday.

Of these, 12,269 were tests in high schools, of whom nine were positive, while all of the 3,108 tests in primary schools were negative.

With nearly the same number of tests and an increase in new infections to 175, 31 more than the day before, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rose to 0.32% from Thursday’s 0.26%, well within the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, 27 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, eight were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 28 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 80 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 32 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All of the 746 samples at retirement homes tested negative, as did 194 tests at restricted institutions and 29 tests of guests at hotels.