Coronavirus: No deaths, 264 people test positive on Thursday (Updated)

Authorities on Thursday announced no new fatalities from Covid-19, while nationwide testing found 264 people testing positive for the coronavirus.

The official death toll stands at 587; earlier in the day, the ministry had said it had added 10 more deaths after verifying the data reported by the epidemiological surveillance unit previously.

The average of the deceased is 76 years.

Meanwhile the number of patients in hospital rose to 80, of whom 32 were in a serious condition. Of the 32, nine were intubated, three in ICU but not on a ventilator, and 20 in high-dependency units.

In addition, three post-Covid (no longer infectious) patients continued to be intubated in ICU.

The ministry reported that 62.5 per cent of those in hospital did not have a vaccination record.

The latest 264 positives came from a total of 58,329 tests – of which 4,154 done with PCR – yielding a positivity rate of 0.45 per cent.

A breakdown of the latest positives: 44 from 561 samples via contact tracing; four from 1,458 samples taken at the airports; 35 from 1,761 samples taken on private initiative; 128 from 32,888 samples (antigen rapid test) processed by private clinical laboratories and pharmacies; and 53 from 21,827 samples (rapid tests) processed through the government’s free screening programme.

Notably, zero positives were tracked from 732 tests at care homes in Nicosia and Limassol districts. Thousands of tests carried out in primary and secondary schools picked up 10 positives.

The cumulative number of coronavirus positives since the start of the outbreak last year comes to 127,036.