Coronavirus: two deaths and 668 new cases announced on Thursday (Updated)

The health ministry on Thursday announced two more deaths from Covid-19, and 668 new positives to the coronavirus from islandwide testing.

The two latest deaths are a man aged 75, unvaccinated against the coronavirus; and another man aged 89, who had received both doses of a vaccine. Both died at Nicosia general hospital.

As per the practice adopted recently, the ministry did not disclose whether the deceased had comorbidities.

This brings the death toll to 308, of whom 66 per cent are men and 34 per cent women. The average age of the deceased is 78 years.

On the hospital front, 279 patients were being treated for Covid-19 – six fewer than 24 hours earlier. And 75 of these were in a serious condition; of the 75, 36 are intubated, three in an ICU but not intubated, and 36 in a high-dependency unit.

The Famagusta referral was treating 66 patients, Nicosia general 73, Limassol 66, Larnaca 43, Paphos 25, and Makarios six.

The latest 668 positives came about from 37,325 tests, for a positivity rate of 1.79 per cent – lower than the previous day’s rate of 2.07 per cent. Testing numbers have also fallen over the past few days.

Of the tests, 6,705 were done with PCR and 30,620 with rapid antigen tests.

The positives broke down as follows: 65 from 2,995 samples taken as part of contact tracing; 166 from 3,308 samples taken via private initiative; 21 from 364 samples processed at state hospitals’ microbiology labs; 18 from 499 samples processed at private clinical labs and pharmacies; and 398 from 30,121 samples from the government’s islandwide testing programme.

By district, and for rapid antigen tests, Limassol had the highest positivity rate at 1.46 per cent; then Nicosia at 1.44 per cent; Larnaca 1.35 per cent; Famagusta 1.22 per cent; and Paphos 1.08 per cent.

The total number of positives since the start of the outbreak in March 2020 stands at 65, 233. That works out to a case fatality rate of 0.47 per cent.