Skopje, 8 May 2023 (MIA) — The country's official number of deaths from SARS-CoV-2 has risen to 9,937 from the previous week’s 9,867 after public health authorities added 70 deaths to the coronavirus death toll in the meantime, the Institute of Public Health said in its latest weekly report on the COVID-19 pandemic.

New COVID-19 cases were recorded in 13 cities. Labs nationwide reported doing 872 tests and logging 66 new SARS-CoV-2 cases betwen May 1–7.

The 66 newly reported cases included 32 reinfections, with the number of reinfections from last week (22,018) climbing to 22,050 this week.

The report also says that, since the start of the pandemic, 37 people had died as a result of a reinfection with the virus.

This is 10 more deaths added to the COVID-19 reinfection death toll in a week. Last week, health authorities had reported 27 deaths following a reinfection.

Officially, 74 people infected with SARS-CoV-2 are considered to be active cases, and 98 people were declared ‘recovered’ from their acute COVID-19 symptoms in the previous week.

Currently hospitalized for SARS-CoV-2 are 11 people. Of them, 5 are on oxygen support and no one is on life-support mechanical ventilation.

Only one death was reported in hospital conditions last week. The person died in an Ohrid hospital, the report says. The total tally of hospital deaths from SARS-CoV-2, however, has climbed from 8,934 to 8,980 in a week.

Since the start of the pandemic, the country’s laboratories have reported doing a total of 2,241,266 coronavirus tests, of which 65.9% PCR tests and 34.1% rapid antigen tests.

So far, public health officials have logged 348,276 infections with SARS-CoV-2, declared 338,265 'recoveries,' and reported 22,050 reinfections with the airborne virus.

Out of the 9,937 deaths from SARS-CoV-2 reported by the Institute of Public Health, 8,980 (90.4%) happened in hospital, the report says. mr/