Coronavirus: Thirty-nine new cases, 33 from abroad (Update 3)

Thirty-nine new coronavirus cases were announced by the health ministry on Monday, updating a previous tally of 30 earlier in the day.

Thirty-three of the new cases were from abroad.

In total the ministry processed 3,522 tests over the past 24 hours.

The ministry said seventeen came from a flight that arrived from Mykonos, Greece to Paphos on August 22, and most of them are connected to each other.

A further ten cases came from a flight that arrived from Amsterdam on August 23, three  from a flight that arrived from London, one case came from Romania and the other two came from Mykonos, Greece to Larnaca, also all travelling on August 23.  The latter two cases travelled with symptoms.

“Examinations of all the cases and contact tracing have already begun,” the ministry said.

Another three cases were found from 71 tests carried out through contact tracing.

One was found from 612 tests processed from individuals tested on private initiative.  The individual has a recent travel history to Argentina.

Two more were found at state hospital laboratories.

Commenting on the 33 cases from abroad, health ministry spokeswoman Margarita Kyriakou said the timely tracking of the cases was important.

She added the reason they conduct 1,000 tests per day at the airports was to find the cases before they leave and enter the community.

“It is certainly an increased number, but the positive is they were found on time, during their arrival, and they were isolated, stopping the spread of the virus in the community,” she said.

“There have been incidents in the past few days, where the people returned from a trip and developed symptoms after two or three days,” she said.

She called on people returning to monitor themselves and report to the doctors if they develop symptoms, even if their airport test comes back negative.

The Netherlands has been moved from Category B, which requires a negative PCR test on arrival, to category C, which bans entry to tourists from those countries. Greece, however, remains in category B.

Entry is only allowed to specific categories of citizens coming from those countries, and all people returning from a Category C country must remain in self-isolation for 14 days.

The ministry also suggested people returning from abroad retake a coronavirus test privately seven days after their return, even if they had done one before or on arrival.