Coronavirus: Positive cases down in last week

The health ministry’s weekly coronavirus report on Friday showed a slightly improved epidemiological picture, recording 13 deaths and 10,152 new infections between July 15 and 21.

The deaths concerned an 83-year-old woman who died on August 21 last year whose passing was declared later to the health ministry, two men aged 85 and 86 who died on July 13, a 77-year-old woman who died on July 14 and a woman and a man, both aged 91 who died on July 15.

A 107-year-old woman, as well as two men aged 98 and 91 also died from the virus on July 17, an 80-year-old man on July 18, a 94-year-old man on July 19, while a 77-year-old man and a 91-year-old man died on July 20 and 21 respectively.

This brings the total number of Covid fatalities recorded since the pandemic outbreak to 1,099, the health ministry report said.

One of the government advisors for coronavirus, Petros Karayiannis, said the figures, which showed total numbers fell by about a third compared to the previous week, showed that we are coming to the end of the sixth wave in Cyprus.

When asked about the Centaur variant that originated in India and is now cropping up in Europe, Karayiannis said that it is probable this will cause a seventh wave, but at least the waves are coming one after the other not at the same time.

The new cases were detected from 111,067 tests, a positivity rate of 9.14 per cent, slightly lower from the previous week’s 12.58 per cent. Last week, 15,386 coronavirus cases were announced from 122,335 tests.

Friday’s report said a total 4,656 PCR tests and 106,411 rapid tests were carried out, from which 768 and 9,384 positives were detected respectively.

Most new infections, 8,716, were found during private testing with rapid tests as another 624 cases were traced after PCR tests carried out on private initiative.

Some 101 cases were detected after 5,745 tests in nursing homes, 50 after 3,225 tests in 24/7 structures and 40 from 652 rapid tests in the national guard.

Just 26 cases were found during contact tracing, while the remaining 477 positives were found from 12,009 rapid tests at the free health ministry testing sites.

Regarding hospitalisations, there are 104 patients with coronavirus at the state hospitals, of whom 11 were in serious condition. Four of them were intubated while five patients were treated in the increased dependency unit.

One patient, who stopped being infectious, was also intubated due to coronavirus.