Cyprus reported two coronavirus deaths on Thursday, as well as an increase in daily cases to 635 and hospitalisations to 139, with fears that the almost certain arrival of the Omicron variant will implode daily figures to over 1,000.
In comments to the Cyprus News Agency, epidemiologist Dr Michalis Voniatis said that while cases seem to have stabilised at around 500-600 a day, cases could explode to 1,500.
The health ministry said in its Covid bulletin that two women, aged 84 and 86, died as a result of the virus. The death toll since the pandemic started reached 607, ten of which in December.
Daily infections rose to 635, from 576 on Wednesday and reaching Monday’s recent high of 706.
Hospitalisations increased by 11 to 139, as serious cases were up by one, at 44.
Intubated patients decreased by one to 15, while 77% of hospital patients were reported as unvaccinated, unchanged from the day before.
Five 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 139,368.
Testing remained at high levels, with 87,780 PCR and antigen rapid tests on Wednesday, about 5,000 more than the day before, with 21,200 attributed to testing in schools.
Fourteen tested positive from 9,158 samples in primary schools, and 19 had the virus among 12,119 in high schools.
Test rises to 0.72%
With a rise in tests, as well as daily infections, the benchmark ‘test positivity’ rate rose to 0.72%, from 0.70%, below the high-risk threshold of 1%.
Of the new infections, 114 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections, 11 were passengers arriving at Larnaca and Paphos airports, and 108 were diagnosed from private initiative, hospital, and GP tests.
A further 274 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 898 tests in retirement homes had a negative result, as well as 525 tests in special schools.
