COVID19: 47 year old dies as cases remain above 400

Cyprus reported one coronavirus death on Friday, the first this week and the sixth this month, as new daily cases dropped to 451, while patient hospitalisations increased again, to 116.

The health ministry said in its daily Covid bulletin that a 47 year old man was the latest victim of the virus, raising the death toll since the pandemic started to 591.

Hospitalisations were up by six, of whom 40 are serious, two less than Thursday.

The number of intubated patients  decreased by one to 16, as 68% 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 132,402.

The number of PCR and antigen rapid tests conducted during the past 24 hours rose to 75,518, about 1,300 more than the day before.

 

More tests in schools

This included 17,400 tests in schools with no targeted testing among students over the weekend.

Ten of the 12,917 tests in high schools were positive and 12 of the 4,549 tests in primary schools.

With a small increase in tests and a drop in daily infections, 38 fewer than the previous day, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate dropped to 0.60% from 0.66%, below the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new cases, two were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 72 were diagnosed from private initiative and hospital tests.

A further 249 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 128 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All of the 106 samples from retirement homes were negative, as well as 193 in restricted institutions and 144 random rapid tests at both airports.