Coronavirus: Two deaths, 145 new cases (Updated)

The health ministry on Thursday announced two more fatalities attributed to Covid-19, while testing detected 145 new positives, with an overall positivity rate of 0.25 per cent.

The two deaths were a man aged 82 and a woman aged 75. Both expired at Nicosia general hospital’s ICU.

That brings the death toll since March last year to 550. The majority of the decedents – 64 per cent – are men. The average age of people having died of Covid-19 is 76.3 years.

The health ministry no longer discloses whether fatalities had underlying conditions or their vaccination status.

On the hospital front, the number of patients declined to 80, of whom 34 were in a serious condition. Of these, 12 were intubated, four in ICU but not on ventilators, and 18 in high-dependency units.

The ministry said 74.12 per cent of all patients did not have a vaccination record.

In addition, 12 post-Covid patients (no longer infectious) were intubated in ICU.

The 145 latest positives came from 57,324 tests – of which 5,561 done with PCR and the rest with rapid antigen.

The cumulative number of positives ever detected in the Republic comes to 119,481.

A breakdown of the 145 positives announced on Thursday: 31 from 250 samples through contact tracing; three from 2,572 samples taken at the airports; 26 from 2,540 samples taken via private initiative; three from 165 samples processed by the microbiology laboratories of the general hospitals; 63 from 29,843 samples processed by private clinical labs and pharmacies; and 19 from 21,920 samples as part of the free government testing programme.

Eight positives turned up from 12,935 tests in high schools in all districts – a positivity rate of 0.06 per cent.

Notably, no positives were reported from testing at nursing homes in the Nicosia and Limassol districts.