Coronavirus: One death, 528 new cases (Updated)

The health ministry announced one death and 528 new cases of coronavirus on Monday, with a positivity rate of 0.91 per cent after 58,097 PCR and rapid tests.

The death was a man, aged 62, with underlying health conditions. He had not been vaccinated.

The ministry said 225 were in hospital of whom 56 are in serious condition.

Of those 56, there are 28 who are intubated, five are receiving treatment in ICUs but are without a ventilator and 23 are in the high dependency unit.

The new positives were identified via 58,097 tests of which 5,963 were PCR and the remaining 52,134 were rapid tests.

Specifically, the breakdown for PCR tests is as follows: 98 positives from 784 tests carried out through the contact tracing programme, eight from 3,456 tests at the airports, 76 from 1,147 tests taken privately, 22 from 368 tests done at the hospitals and three from 208 tests taken after being referred to do so by GPs.

A total of 554 rapid tests were taken privately which yielded six positives.

The remaining 51,580 rapid tests taken via the government’s programme returned 315 positive results.

Notably, both Larnaca and Paphos had a higher positivity rate from the rapid tests than Limassol.

Larnaca’s was the highest and was recorded at 0.87 per cent after 52 positives were identified via 5,943 rapid tests, followed by Paphos’ 0.84 per cent from 28 positives from 3,316 tests, Limassol’s 75 positives from 9,954 tests, Nicosia’s 0.67 per cent from 106 positives from 15,704 tests and finally; Famagusta’s 0.61 per cent with 14 positives from 2,310 tests.

No positives were found at care homes while 26 positives were identified via 10,620 tests taken in the education sector.