COVID19: New cases near 500, no deaths

Cyprus reported no coronavirus deaths on Thursday as new daily cases shot up to 489 while hospitalisations decreased to 110.

Some 38 of the new Covid-19 cases resulted from tests in schools.

The health ministry said that in its daily Covid bulletin that hospitalisations were down by seven, of whom 42 are serious, three more from Wednesday.

With no Covid-19 deaths reported for the fifth day in a row and the nineteenth day this month, the toll since the pandemic started remained at 590, of which five were in November.

The number of intubated patients remained unchanged at 17, as 60% 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 SARS-CoV-2 infections since March 2020 rose to 131,951.

The number of PCR and antigen rapid tests conducted during the past 24 hours rose to 74,277, about 13,000 more than the day before.

 

Increase in schools

This included 16,800 tests in schools.

Of the 4,256 samples taken in primary schools, 13 tested positive, and 25 more among 12,591 high school students, most of which were in Nicosia.

With an increase in tests and in daily infections, 55 more than the previous day, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate dropped to 0.66% from 0.71%, below the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, 88 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, six were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 98 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 202 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 95 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All of the 681 samples from retirement homes were negative, as well as 812 in special schools and 161 random rapid tests at both airports.

Only one tested positive among 171 samples in restricted institutions.