The health ministry said there were no new Covid deaths on Friday but announced 119 new cases through PCR and rapid testing.

There are 145 people in hospitals, of whom 51 are in serious condition. Of the 51, 26 are intubated, nine are in ICU but without ventilators and 16 are the high dependency unit.

As for the cases, they were identified out of a total 18,972 tests, of which 1,406 were PCR tests and 17,566 were rapid tests.

The majority, 74, were from rapid tests.

The PCR tests identified: 22 from contact tracing (155 tests), 13 from private tests (704), eight from the labs at hospitals (243 tests), two from testing migrants’ housing quarters (two tests).

Notably, no positive were identified out of 235 tests done at the airports and none of the 67 tests taken after a doctors’ referral returned positive either.

Limassol once again recorded the most cases, 32, and had the highest positivity rate at 0.67 per cent – although greatly reduced from previous days – out of 4,743 rapid tests.

Famagusta’s three positives out of 766 rapid tests placed it in second as regards the positivity rate, which stood at 0.39 per cent.

Larnaca was next with 0.32 per cent positivity, seven positives from 2,171 tests. Paphos’ five positives from 1,637 tests yielded a 0.31 per cent positivity rate.

Finally, Nicosia had the second highest total number of cases from rapid tests with 19 positives but the lowest positivity rate – at 0.28 per cent from 6,658 tests.

The total number of recorded positives stands at 30,657 as of Friday night.