Cyprus reported four coronavirus deaths on Friday, daily cases inched above the 2,000 marker to 2,114, as the rate of hospitalisations dropped to 137, while critical cases were also down to 30, three less than the previous day.
The health ministry said in its Covid bulletin that the latest victims were two men, aged 68 and 83, and two women, 79 and 90, raising the March death toll to nine and the national figure to 873, two years into the pandemic.
Earlier in the day, the health ministry revised Covid-19 death toll, after eight deaths between April and December last year, were attributed to the pandemic.
January was the deadliest month on record with 100, followed by 91 in February, overtaking the previous record of 80 last August.
Intubated patients decreased by two to 12, while 58% of hospitalised COVID-19 patients were unvaccinated.
The number of patients admitted in the Covid wards dropped from 144 to 137.
Some 16 patients are still considered post-Covid, having recovered from the virus, but remain intubated and in a serious state.
107,000 tests
The total number of SARS-CoV-2 infections since March 2020 has risen to 329,674.
A total of 107,650 PCR and rapid tests were conducted during the past 24 hours, 9,000 more than the previous day, as testing continued in schools with 36,000 samples.
Of the 11,401 tests in high schools 86 were positive, as well as 87 among 20,607 tests in primary schools, while 32 tested positive from 3,779 samples as part of the ‘test to stay’ programme.
The increase in the number of tests, as well as new cases from 2,046 to 2,114 helped push the benchmark ‘positivity rate’ below the 2% level down from Thursday’s 2.08% to 1.96%, less than double the safe marker of 1%.
Having peaked at 5,457 on January 4, driven by a spike in the Omicron variant, new cases remained below 2,000 for the most part of the last week.
Of the new infections, 118 were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections.
Four infections were discovered from 871 tests in care homes, while all 37 tests in restricted institutions were negative for the virus.
