Coronavirus: January a killer month for Covid-19 patients

January was the deadliest month since the pandemic outbreak, with 96 deaths attributed to Covid-19, the health ministry’s epidemiological report showed on Friday.

Overall, 104 people with coronavirus died in January, a 136 per cent increase compared with the previous month.

The ministry’s experts added that 69 per cent of the deaths last month concerned unvaccinated people.

Two per cent were fully vaccinated, nine per cent had received the booster jab and 20 per cent had only received the first dose of two-dose Covid vaccine.

Half of the fatalities in January concerned those aged 70 and older who had not received an anti-coronavirus vaccine.

August 2021, with 95, had the highest number of people who died with Covid compared to January 2022’s 104. It was followed by December 2020 with 90 deaths, January 2021 with 86 deaths, April 2021 with 66 deaths, May 2021 with 59 and July with 49 deaths.

A total of 738 people died from the virus, while of 257,755 cases of coronavirus were recorded on the island since the pandemic outbreak, of whom 7,324 received hospital care as of February 2.

Despite higher number of females testing positive to the virus, more males end up being seriously ill or dying from the virus, according to the report.

Of the hospitalisations, 4,052 were men. For 103 patients, information as to their gender was unavailable. Overall, 461 of the deaths concerned males 314 women.

The Covid-19 associated mortality in the country is 83.1 per 100,000 population.

The data was announced as part of a bi-monthly report, which examined the epidemiological situation in the last 14 days, starting January 19.

It showed the largest number of the 31,013 coronavirus infections in the last 14 days were recorded in children and teenagers, with the health ministry estimating this might be attributed to increased testing in those ages.

The cases were diagnosed from 83,211 PCR and 1,364,727 rapid antigen tests, translating to a 14-day cumulative diagnosis rate of 3,492.5 per 100,000 population.

Almost 34 per cent of the new cases concerned those aged 19 and under while just one tenth of the cases were people aged 60 and older, the report showed.

Some 10,525 infections were detected in the 0-19 age group, 17,315 concerned 20-59 years and 3,167 concerned people aged 60 and older while for six cases age was not available. The median age of adult cases is 39 years.

The percentage for females was slightly higher than males who made up 48.9 per cent of the cases.

Among the cases, district information was available only for 26,543, of which 9,053 were reported in Nicosia district, 7,567 in Limassol, 5,342 in Larnaca, 2,932 in Paphos, 1,633 in Famagusta and 16 cases had residence abroad.

Concerning hospitalisations, the report said that as of February 2, 232 people were still hospitalised with the virus, 37 of whom were in ICU. It showed that 115 out of 191 hospitalisations with available information were males.