Coronavirus: Five deaths announced on Friday, 311 new positives (Updated)

The health ministry announced on Friday that five people had died of Covid-19 and that 311 more had tested positive from 48,060 PCR and rapid tests, a positivity rate of 0.65 per cent.

The deaths concerned five men aged 82, 88, 64, 57 and 53. Two died on Thursday and three on Friday.

There are 201 people in hospitals of whom 77 are in serious condition. Of these, 45 are intubated.

The ministry said that the percentage of unvaccinated patients was 83 per cent.

Of the 48,060 tests on Friday there were 7,075 PCR tests with the remaining 40,985 comprising of rapid tests

Some 3,483 travellers tested at the airports returned seven positives.

A further 3,345 tests taken privately yielded 70 positives and 228 tests taken at the hospitals uncovered 20 positives.

A total of 24,603 rapid tests taken privately returned 141 positives while 16,382 rapid tests taken via the government’s screening programme identified 73 positives.

Limassol carried out 3,434 such tests and found 15 positives while Larnaca’s 2,071 tests yielded seven positives.

Paphos’ 1,844 tests identified ten positives and, finally, Famagusta’s 1,427 tests uncovered five positives.

The total number of deaths from Covid-19 stands at 475 with men accounting for about two thirds of the fatalities (306 or 64 per cent).