Twenty-seven out of 119 COVID-19 cases or 22.7% confirmed in Cyprus between July 20-August 3 had a travel history or were detected during tests at the airports, according to data published by the Health Ministry on Thursday.
84 or 70.6% of cases during this period were domestic ones and 8 or 6.7% are still under investigation.
The Health Ministry announced that the of the 27 cases, the 26 are Cypriot citizens or residents. One person is a foreigner who travelled to the island for tourism. Nine of the 27 people were detected at the airports.
The Ministry points out that the epidemiological data show that the spike in cases the last days is due to the spread between citizens who have no travel history, thus they are domestic cases even though some of the clusters have started from a person or persons with a history of travel.
It is also added that the resumption of the flights has resulted to imported cases being detected and this is observed not only in Cyprus but in other countries which reopened their airports. However it is noted that Cyprus applies some of the stricter measures and requires a negative test from countries in categories B and C. This practice is now followed by countries like Austria and Germany, the Ministry says.
It is also pointed out that Cyprus randomly tests passengers from countries in category A, the only country that does so in the EU, apart from Greece.