Coronavirus: One death and 79 new cases announced on Tuesday (updated)

The health ministry announced one death from Covid-19 and 79 new cases on Tuesday which were detected via 43,347 tests, a positivity rate of 0.18 per cent.

The person who died was a 77-year-old man, raising the total number of deaths to 357 of whom 67 per cent (238) were men.

The health ministry no longer reports whether the deceased had underlying health conditions or had been vaccinated against Covid-19.

As of Tuesday night, there are 97 patients with Covid-19 of whom 37 are in serious condition.

In total, 43,347 tests were performed of which 5,035 were PCR tests.

The breakdown for the PCR tests is as follows: twelve positives from 221 contact tracing tests, one from 2,492 tests at the airports, 17 from 1,559 tests taken privately and four from 376 tests taken at the hospitals.

Two of the 844 rapid tests taken privately returned positive.

The majority, 43 positives, were identified via the government’s screening programme which carried out 37,468 rapid tests on Tuesday.

Nicosia’s positivity rate was recorded at a low of 0.07 per cent as just eight of the 12,040 rapid tests yielded a positive result.

Larnaca and Paphos both had a rate of 0.11 per cent and both recorded four positives (3,651 and 3,578 tests respectively).

Famagusta’s rate was 0.23 per cent with five positives from 2,182 tests and, finally, Limassol’s rate was 0.26 per cent with 20 positives from 7,653 tests.

Notably, from the 6,872 rapid tests taken at high-schools just one returned positive.

None of the tests at care homes returned positive.

Meanwhile in the north 18 new cases were found from 9,361 tests.