SCENARIOS FOR STRICTER MEASURES OR PRE-HOLIDAY QUARANTINE

 Filenews 9 November 2020 - by Marilena Panagi

With the number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus having exceeded all previous levels reaching 77, the Organization of State Health Services, holding a meeting yesterday afternoon in order to put on standby and the hospital of Limassol to accept patients and the number of cases remains at high levels, since even yesterday, a day on which the majority of private laboratories , did not work on Sunday, the Government is obliged to make new decisions. 

At 7 p.m., the President of the Republic is holding a meeting again with the members of the Scientific Advisory Committee and it must be considered certain that various scenarios will fall on the table, including the application of even stricter restrictions on traffic or elsewhere, but certainly also the possibility of a new quarantine, possibly with some variations, in relation to what was applied last spring.

The increased daily number of cases, and in particular the significant increase in the number of people in need of hospitalisation, does not allow the Government to delay its decisions further, since it is now called upon to proceed with restrictions which will stem the huge dispersion of the crown in society and the only way to achieve this seems to be to tighten up measures aimed at reducing contacts between citizens and regaining control. , through the tracing process. Inevitably, any decisions taken, in addition to the health aspect of the crisis, will also be related to the economy of the country. For this reason, it is not out of the question that the Government will, at the moment, prefer the extreme scenario of universal lockdown, in order to give the market the opportunity to recover over the Christmas period.

Until last night, of course, as reported by the 'F', the proposals which may be put before the President of the Republic today were being processed, since the scientists considered it more appropriate to re-evaluate the situation taking into account the epidemiological data of recent days. For this reason, it is not excluded that if it is finally found that the measures in force since last Wednesday have started to pay off somewhat, the Government will come up with milder quarantine solutions.

Final decisions, of course, will be taken by the Government and possibly related announcements to follow tonight's meeting at the Presidential.

As far as the situation in hospitals is concerned, yesterday's significant increase in the number of patients in hospital forced the Agency of State Health Services into a new reconstitution. Given the fact that in the reference hospital, famagusta hospital, which has a capacity of 88 beds, 61 patients were hospitalized yesterday afternoon, the OKYY considered it appropriate to officially integrate the Limassol hospital, which will accommodate patients with coronavirus, in case the Nicosia hospital is not able to meet all needs.

The report of the day yesterday brought 116 new cases of coronavirus. However, as the Ministry of Health pointed out in its communication, "despite the fact that the number of cases is certainly much lower than in previous days, account must be taken of the fact that the private laboratories obviously did not work in the majority of them due to Sunday. This can also be seen from the small number of laboratory tests carried out.

Specifically, we only had 369 tests. In addition, out of a total of 2,803 tests, 1,173 concerned checks carried out at airports, of which 11 cases occurred. As a result, 105 cases were the result of only 1630 tests involving people from the community. In addition, the tracing process resulted in 69 cases from 560 laboratory tests with the proportion remaining at very low levels since it does not exceed one in 8".