COVID19: 12 deaths in a week, oldest victim 107

Cyprus reported twelve deaths in its weekly Covid bulletin on Friday, as new cases and hospitalisations dropped marginally from last week’s levels to 10,152 and 104, respectively.

The Health Ministry said the latest victims of the pandemic were nine men, aged 77 to 98, and three women, 77 and 91, and the oldest death so far, 107, raising the July death toll to 23 and the to-date figure to 1,099.

The June death toll was limited to six and for May it was 23, while April’s figure was 75, just ahead of 67 in March.

January remained the deadliest month on record with 101 deaths, followed by 96 in February, overtaking the previous record of 85 last August, adjusted up by one, according to this week’s data.

Some 393, or 36% of all deaths in Cyprus have occurred in the first seven months of this year.

Hospitalisations dropped within a week from 117 to 104, critical cases rose by two to 11, with four intubated patients, unchanged from last week.

One patient is still considered post-Covid, one less from the week before, having recovered from the virus but remaining intubated and in a serious state.

The total of all coronavirus infection cases since the pandemic started rose to 556,048.

Average daily 1,450

The past week saw 10,152 new cases, about 5,000 less than last week, with the average daily dropping from 2,198 to 1,450.

Testing increased with a total of 111,067 PCR and rapid antigen tests were conducted during the past week, 11,000 fewer than the week before.

This helped lower the benchmark ‘positivity rate’ to 9.14% from last week’s 12.58%, having spiked to a new year-high of 13.42% a fortnight ago, and is about nine times above the safe limit of 1%.

Of the new Covid-19 cases, eight were identified through contact tracing linked to earlier infections.

With thousands of new recruits embarking on their military service this month, 40 soldiers serving in the National Guard tested positive and 101 new cases were reported in care homes, as well as 50 in restricted institutions.