Coronavirus: Whole country becomes a dark red zone as cases rise

Cyprus has been declared a ‘dark red zone’ based on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the health ministry’s epidemiological report revealed on Friday.

According to the ECDC, “this colour should indicate areas where the virus is circulating at very high levels, including because of more infectious variants of concern.”

Between March 3 and March 16, the country saw “a clear upward trend” in all epidemiological indicators, the health ministry’s epidemiological team said.

In that period, 4,703 coronavirus cases were diagnosed from 43,419 PCR and 557,223 rapid antigen tests, raising the 14-day cumulative diagnosis rate to 529.6 per 100,000 up from 397.3 the previous week. Countries with a 14-day cumulative Covid-19 diagnosis rate of 500 or more are marked with a dark red colour.

The increased infection rate in Cyprus has been attributed to the UK variant B.1.1.7 of the virus which is said to be 70 per cent more infectious than variants detected earlier in the pandemic.

The majority of the cases were again traced in Limassol, where residents and police appear to be more lenient with their compliance to the coronavirus measures. The positivity rate of the district saw an increase to 1.3 per cent with 2,797 new cases representing 59.5 per cent of the total over the period.

Limassol’s cumulative diagnosis rate also increased to 1,126.5 per 100,000 residents which is “five times more than the rest of the districts”, the health ministry said. Specifically, Nicosia has a 324.5/100,000 diagnosis rate, Paphos 254.7/100,000, Larnaca is at 234.2/100,000 and Famagusta at 229/100,000.

The report also recorded an increase in younger people testing positive for coronavirus.

Of the cases traced in the last two weeks, 64.5 per cent were people aged 20 to 59, or 3,034 people, another 20 per cent were infants or children under 19, and only 15.2 per cent were people aged 60 and older, while data was not available for 14 cases.

The median age of all cases diagnosed in the last 14 days is 37 years.

Meanwhile, the weekly positivity rate at nursing homes remained at 0.1 per cent since the end of January “which is assessed as very positive and attributed to a very large extent to the vaccination of residents and staff,” the ministry added.

The situation in hospitals remains critical, with most patients coming from Limassol, while more Nicosia based residents have been hospitalised, according to the report.

“The majority [of patients] appear to be persons under 60 years of age. On the positive side, the seven-day average number of admissions in people over 75 years of age has stabilised,” the ministry said.

As of March 18, a total of 216 patients were hospitalised with the median age of 65 years and 132 of them came from the Limassol district. One hundred and fifty three cases still hospitalised have comorbidities according to the report.

Of them, 24 patients are still in ICU with an average age of 69. The majority, 19 patients, are men. Eighteen of them had pre-existing health conditions. Sixteen of them were intubated.

Nine out of the ten people who died from coronavirus since the beginning of the month up to March 18, came from Limassol, the report said. No deaths have been reported in nursing homes since February.