The health ministry announced that one person had died of Covid-19 and that 419 more had tested positive from 54,173 PCR and rapid tests, a positivity rate of 0.77 per cent.

The death concerned a man aged 90 who died on Thursday at the Famagusta hospital. So far 455 people have died from Covid-19: 297 men and 158 women with an average age of 77 years.

There are 259 people in hospitals of whom 92 are in serious condition. Of these, 45 are intubated.

According to the ministry, 83.1 per cent of those in hospitals are unvaccinated.

Of the new positives, 66 were people who took PCR tests privately, 15 were from samples processed in state hospitals’ labs, two were people referred for testing by their physicians, and 247 were people who got rapid tests privately from a total of 30,800.

Seven cases were detected during testing at Larnaca and Paphos airports.

Another 84 cases were among samples processed at the rapid testing sites through the health ministry’s testing programme, which took 17,029 samples.

Some 22 cases were detected in the Nicosia district from 6,942 tests, 25 in Limassol (3,656 tests), 14 in Larnaca (1,995), 6 in Paphos (1,793) and 13 in the Famagusta district (1,674).

The total number of positives to date is 108,306.