Health authorities on Thursday announced one more death from Covid-19 and 213 new positives from island-wide testing.

The new cases came from 74,926 PCR and rapid tests, for a positivity rate of 0.28 per cent.

The latest death was a man aged 63, who passed away at Nicosia general hospital’s ICU.

As per the policy it adopted recently, the health ministry did not disclose whether the deceased had any comorbidities or whether he was vaccinated.

That takes the death toll from Covid to 342, of whom 226 (or 66 per cent) are men. The average age of the deceased is 77.7 years.

Hospitals across the island were treating 167 coronavirus patients, of whom 54 were said to be in a serious condition.

Of the 54 in a serious condition, 32 were intubated, two treated in ICU without intubation, and 20 in a high-dependency unit.

The Famagusta referral hospital for Covid had 31 patients; Nicosia general hospital 60; Limassol general 48; Larnaca general 15; Paphos general 11; and Makarios hospital two.

The total number of positives recorded since the start of the outbreak last year comes to 70,571.

A breakdown of the 213 positives worked out as follows: 43 from 597 samples through contact tracing; 51 from 1,661 samples through private initiative; 12 from 419 samples processed at hospitals’ microbiology labs; 10 from 1,138 samples (antigen rapid tests) processed by private clinical labs and pharmacies; and 97 from 68,709 samples through the government’s islandwide free testing programme.

By district, and for antigen rapid tests only, Limassol had a positivity rate of 0.20 per cent; Famagusta 0.17 per cent; Nicosia 0.16 per cent; Paphos 0.15 per cent; and Larnaca 0.14 per cent.