COVID19: October sees 13 days of no deaths

Cyprus reported no coronavirus deaths on Sunday for the thirteenth day this month, as October ended with 20 victims and the death toll since the pandemic started unchanged at 574.

After a record 80 deaths in August, the number dropped to 40 in September.

The number of hospitalisations rose marginally to 61 from 58, and new daily cases fell to 112 from Saturday’s 155.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid report that of the 61 patients admitted to state hospitals for treatment, 20 remain serious, down one from the previous day.

Meanwhile, intubated patients were down to five, and 62% of hospital patients were reported as unvaccinated.

Another six 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 124,444.

The number of PCR and antigen rapid tests conducted during the past 24 hours fell by 8,000 to 38,554.

 

Rate drops to 0.29%

With fewer tests and infections dropping to 112, 43 less than Saturday, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ fell to 0.29% from 0.33%, well within the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, five were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, six were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 14 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 33 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 54 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

Of the 60 tests in retirement homes all were negative, while one tested positive among 278 random rapid tests of passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, while three were positive from 1,832 samples from restricted institutions.