Coronavirus: one death, 175 people test positive on Friday (Updated)

Health authorities on Friday announced one death and 175 new positives from testing for Covid-19, while the number of hospitalised people amounts to a total of 57.

The new death toll now stands at 567.

In total, 57 people were being treated for Covid-19 in hospitals, of whom 23 in a serious condition. Of those in a serious condition, eight were intubated, two in ICU but not on a ventilator, and 13 in high-dependency units.

In addition, three post-Covid patients continued to be intubated in ICU.

The health ministry said 59.65 per cent of those in hospital did not have a record of vaccination.

The 175 new positives came from 55,018 tests – of which 5,385 were done with PCR. The overall positivity rate for the day stood at 0.32 per cent.

A breakdown of the positives: 27 from contact tracing; 8 from samples taken at the airports; 25 through private initiative; three from samples processed by the microbiology laboratories at the general hospitals; 80 from samples processed at private clinical labs and pharmacies and 32 through the government’s free testing programme.

No positives were tracked in care homes or primary schools, and only nine positive cases were found in secondary schools across all districts from close to 12,000 tests.

The cumulative number of positives detected since the outbreak last year comes to 123,171, around 10-12 per cent of the population.