Hospitals 90% full over holidays

Hospitals across Cyprus were between 85 and 90 per cent full during the holiday period, with that figure set to rise over the coming days in the aftermath of festive gatherings, state health services organisation (Okypy) spokesman Charalambos Charilaou said on Friday.

Speaking to CyBC radio, he said the high occupancy rate is “a natural consequence of the period”, and that many of the admissions seen during the holiday period came about due to “seasonal infections”.

Most of those cases, he said, were patients who had contracted influenza ‘A’, while one person died of the disease.

On this matter, he stressed that “we will have deaths, like every year”, but said that this year’s rate of infection resembles that of last year, and that the rise in cases over the holiday period has not “affected the functionality of the health system”.

He added that around 112,000 people across the island have thus far received the influenza vaccine, before briefly commenting on cases of Covid-19.

“Covid has come into our lives and will remain. The number of cases is very low and not worrisome,” he said.

He also spoke about cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), saying that “this phenomenon has not been strongly observed, while there are a few incidences”, while in previous years, the disease had caused paediatric units to be full.

This comparative reduction, he said, “may” have come about thanks to Gesy providing vaccinations against the disease to infants under eight months of age and to pregnant women.