COVID19: New cases remain above 300, no deaths

Cyprus reported no coronavirus deaths for the fifth day in a row on Wednesday and the thirteenth this month, as the number of new daily cases continued to remain above 300, dropping slightly to 346, with fewer hospitalisations at 81.

The Health Ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that the death toll since the pandemic started remained at 588.

New daily infections dropped by 40 from Tuesday to 346, while hospitalisations were seven fewer, of whom 37 are serious, one less.

At 15, intubated patients remained the same, as 61% of all hospital patients were reported as unvaccinated.

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 128,770.

The number of PCR and antigen rapid tests conducted during the past 24 hours totalled 53,832, around 6,000 fewer than the previous day, with 15,400 tests in schools.

 

Drop in high school infections

Of the 11,773 samples in high schools, 16 tested positive, seven less than Tuesday, and six had the virus from 3,743 tests in primary schools.

With fewer tests and a small decrease in new cases, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate dropped marginally to 0.64% from 0.65%, but within the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, 74 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, two were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 84 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 112 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 74 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All of the 786 tests at retirement homes were negative, one was positive from 159 random rapid tests at airports, while three tested positive from among 2,163 samples in restricted institutions.