Coronavirus: one death, 78 new cases (Update)

One person died as a result of Covid-19 and 78 new cases were detected out of 40,466 tests, the health ministry announced on Sunday.

The death refers to an 89-year-old woman who was being treated at the Famagusta reference hospital. This brings the death toll since the start of the pandemic to 552.

Currently, 79 patients are hospitalised of which 29 are described to be in serious condition. Of these, 14 are intubated, two are in ICU but not on a ventilator and 13 are in a high dependency unit.

There are 11 post-Covid patients that are intubated in ICU units in hospital.

According to the health ministry 76.2 per cent of hospitalised Covid-19 patients have not been vaccinated.

A total of 40,466 tests were carried out for Sunday’s figures, of which 4,900 were PCR tests and 35,566 were antigen rapid tests, the health ministry said. There were 78 cases which were found to be positive bringing the total cases to 119,767.

The positivity rate stands at 0.19 per cent.

Among the 78 cases, nine stemmed from 158 samples taken through contact tracing and seven cases were found from 2,919 samples collected during random testing at Larnaca and Paphos airports.

Nine cases out of 1,487 samples were found through tests taken on private initiative and two cases were found from 259 samples through GP referrals.

A further eight cases were found from 76 samples taken at hospital laboratory tests, 22 cases out of 14,389 rapid tests in private labs and pharmacies and 21 cases were found from 21,177 free rapid tests carried out through the health ministry.

Broken down by city, Nicosia had eight positive cases out of 9,010 tests, Limassol and Larnaca had three cases each out of 3,608 and 3,374 tests respectively. In Paphos, four cases were found out of 2,359 tests and no cases were found in Famagusta out of 1,719 tests.

The average age of people who died from Covid-19 related causes is 76.4. From the 552 deaths, 350 (or 63 per cent) were men and 202 (37 per cent) were women.