Cyprus reported three Covid deaths on Tuesday, raising the November toll to 12, as new infections continued to spiral to 613, reaching late-July levels, with hospitalisations rising again, to 118.
The health ministry said in its daily bulletin that the latest victims were two men, aged 58 and 72, and a 75 year old woman, with the death toll since the pandemic started rising to 597.
After a record 80 deaths in August, the number dropped to 40 in September and 20 in October.
After the average daily rate of coronavirus infections rose above 400 throughout the past week, it peaked at 535 on Saturday, then 586 on Monday and 613 on Tuesday, nearing the July 30 peak of 635.
Hospitalisations were up once again, rising by two to 118, the same as last Saturday. The serious cases reached 51, up from 46 the day before.
The number of intubated patients remained unchanged at 18, as 66% of all hospital patients were reported as unvaccinated.
Two 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 134,473.
Testing dropped to 85,244 PCR and antigen rapid tests, down from Monday’s high of 102,692, including 22,800 samples from schools.
Spike in primaries
Positive cases spiked to 30 from among 9,793 tests in primary schools, with 18 infections in 13,081 tests at high schools.
With a drop in tests and daily infections spiralling to 613, some 27 more than the previous day, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate rose to 0.72% from 0.57%, below the high-risk threshold of 1%.
Of the new cases, 97 were traced from previous cases, ten were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 93 were diagnosed from private initiative, hospital, and GP tests.
A further 259 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 153 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.
All of the 1,139 samples from retirement homes were negative, with one testing positive among 166 tests in restricted institutions.
