The health ministry on Tuesday announced two deaths and 5,089 new coronavirus infections from 95,315 tests, giving a positivity rate of 5.34 per cent.

It said that there are a total of 182 Covid-19 patients in state hospitals, of whom 54.95 per cent have no vaccination history. Of the 182 Covid patients in hospital, 21 are in serious condition, of whom four are intubated. Another 21 post-Covid patients remain on the ventilator in ICUs.

The two deaths are of a man aged 76 and a woman aged 88 and bring the total of deaths from Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic to 932.

The 5,089 new infections detected on Tuesday bring the total since the start of the pandemic to 421,603.

Overall, 95,315 tests were carried out of which 4,344 were PCR tests leading to 522 infections detected. The remaining 4,567 cases were detected from 90,971 rapid tests.

The ministry said that after contact tracing of previously confirmed cases, 101 infections were detected from 482 PCR tests and 106 from 851 rapid tests.

There were 1,696 PCR tests and 35,896 rapid tests by private initiative with 309 and 2,890 positive cases detected respectively.

The ministry’s programme saw a total of 55,075 rapid tests carried out resulting in 1,677 infections on which 1,195 from rapid test sites (from 17,809 tests).

As regards education, 148 cases were detected after 18,505 rapid tests at primary schools, 91 infections after 9,846 tests at secondary schools and 98 infections after 5,982 tests under the test-to-stay programme.

In addition, 1,117 rapid tests administered at care homes resulted in 26 positive cases, 396 tests in closed facilities in six new cases and 596 tests in government services in seven infections.