Data released by the Cypriot government includes cases in the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, but does not include cases in Northern Cyprus due to the long-running Cyprus dispute.
On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.
[5][7] In 2021, Cyprus was leading in investment for software and data, following adoption of digital technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite pressure from local businesses, health minister Constantinos Ioannou said in July 2020 that Cyprus would not lift entry restrictions on its largest tourism markets (namely the United Kingdom and Russia) unless it were safe to do because these countries had some of the highest rates of the virus in the world at that time.
He said that it would not be possible to implement mass testing to screen all passengers from high-risk countries upon their arrival in Cyprus because quarantine facilities and hospitals would not be able to accommodate the expected number of infected people.