Coronavirus: Four deaths and 1,046 more people test positive on Thursday (Updated)

Health authorities on Thursday announced four more deaths attributed to Covid-19, while 89,188 – a record number of daily tests tracked 1,046 positives to the virus.

The latest deaths were: a woman aged 74, who passed away at Limassol general hospital; a woman aged 69, who passed away at Nicosia general’s ICU; a man aged 87, who passed away at Nicosia general; and a man aged 85, who passed away at Limassol general.

The death toll now stands at 398, of whom 264 are men. The average age of the deceased is 77.2.

The health ministry no longer discloses whether the deceased had underlying conditions or were vaccinated for the coronavirus.

The ministry did note that 90.2 per cent of current Covid-19 patients were not vaccinated. On Thursday the number of patients rose to 264, of whom 68 were said to be in a serious condition. Of the 68 in a serious condition, 28 were intubated, one in ICU but not intubated, and 39 in a high-dependency unit.

The Famagusta referral hospital was treating 71 patients, Nicosia general 69, Limassol general 90, Larnaca general 27, and Makarios hospital seven.

Overall a record number of 89,188 tests were carried out – of which 8,298 with PCR. From the sample, the latest 1,046 positives represent a positivity rate of 1.17 per cent.

Most of the positives – 636 – came from the government’s free antigen rapid test programme; another 66 positives from 523 contact tracing samples; nine from 2,996 samples taken at airports; 251 from 4,432 samples taken via private initiative; 21 from 267 samples processed at the microbiology laboratories of general hospital; and 63 from 2,314 samples processed by private clinical labs and pharmacies.

As part of the government testing programme, and by district, the positivity rates were as follows: Larnaca 1.19 per cent; Paphos 1.08 per cent; Limassol 1.07 per cent; Nicosia 0.83 per cent; Famagusta 0.80 per cent.

Included in these, four positives were tracked at nursing homes in Limassol, and another 12 in nursing homes in Larnaca.

The 636 positives from the free government programme derived from 78,576 rapid test samples. Of these, 15,857 tests were carried out at businesses, but this was over a period of some three weeks – from June 30 to July 21.

The 15,857 tests at businesses over this three-week period yielded 37 positives.

It is not know why these tests and positives were not announced previously.