The ministry of health announced 197 new cases of coronavirus on Monday and one more death out of 2,812 tests, as the government appears likely to enforce stricter measures.
The man who died, aged 91, was a resident at the Sokration old people’s home in Limassol. A 91-year-old woman who died from coronavirus last Saturday was also a resident at the same care home.
In total 37 residents and staff of the home have now tested positive for coronavirus.
The ultimate cause of the man’s death, however, has been attributed to septic shock and he had serious underlying health conditions, the health ministry said. The woman who died also had serious underlying health conditions.
The results at the home were among 106 test samples collected on Sunday by staff of the state health services organisation (Okypy), after a large number of positive cases was initially found through rapid tests at the Sokration home which had been carried out by a lab not recognised by the ministry.
The latest high numbers came on the same day that the Health Minister Constantinos Ioannou met with the advisory committee on coronavirus as rumours spread of a partial lockdown islandwide announced probably within the week.
Following the spike in cases in the past few weeks, Ioannou met with the epidemiology experts to assess the situation ahead of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, after which any new measures are expected to be announced.
The granddaughter of the woman who died at the weekend told Sigmalive that one of the staff members, a nurse, had been found positive for the virus more than a week ago. The nurse had presented symptoms on October 10 but tested negative. She was sent home and after getting tested two more times, she was found positive the third time.
The granddaughter said she was notified on October 27 after the nurse tested positive that her grandmother had been taken to the Famagusta hospital after presenting symptoms. She died a few days later.
So far 34 deaths have been linked to positive cases. The virus has been cited as the cause of death in 26 of those cases, while the rest died with but not of the virus.
This includes 17 men and nine women with the average age being 73.
As for the rest of Monday’s cases, 103 were recorded after 852 contact tracing tests were carried out.
A further 315 tests done via private initiative identified 15 cases.
155 tests done at labs in the general hospitals recorded 12 cases.
Finally, eight travellers were positive out of a total of 1,078 tests.
There are currently 27 patients at the Famagusta referral hospital, four of which are in the high dependency unit. A further five patients are intubated in Nicosia general hospital’s ICUs and another eight are receiving care in the Covid-19 wing.
