COVID19: Three deaths, cases drop below 600

Cyprus reported three coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, with hospitalisations continuing to rise to 128, yet new daily infections dropping slightly to below 600.

The health ministry said that two men, aged 51 and 89, as well as a 71 year old woman were the latest victims of the pandemic.

This brought the death toll since March last year to 605, eight of which were in December.

Daily infections dropped to 576, from 619 on Tuesday and Monday’s recent high of 706.

Hospitalisations increased by ten to 128, as serious cases were down by two, at 43.

Intubated patients decreased by two to 16, while 77% of hospital patients were reported as unvaccinated.

Six patients are 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 138,733.

Testing remained at high levels, with 82,025 PCR and antigen rapid tests on Wednesday, about 2,000 more than the day before, with 21,500 attributed to testing in schools.

Twenty tested positive from 9,200 samples in primary schools, and 18 had the virus among 12,381 in high schools.

 

Test positivity at 0.70%

With a rise in tests and a drop in daily infections, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate fell to 0.70%, from 0.77%, below the high-risk threshold of 1%.

Of the new infections, 120 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 17 were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 101 were diagnosed from private initiative, hospital, and GP tests.

A further 237 cases were identified from private rapid tests at labs and pharmacies, and 119 were positive from the free national testing programme, available only to those vaccinated or recovered from earlier infections.

All of the 843 tests in retirement homes had a negative result, as well as 2,447 tests in restricted institutions.