in-cyprus 24 May 2020 -Constantinos Tsintas
The Health Ministry announced the results of an epidemiological risk assessment, in an attempt to classify low and higher risk countries, when international airports in Cyprus are set to reopen next month.
As the ministry said, the epidemiological team’s assessment was based on the various countries’ relevant indicators, such as the Covid reproduction in real numbers, new cases, the number of deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants, as well the World Health Organisations’ classification, as derived from credible databases.
It is noted that the credibility of these data is based on each country’s policy as concerns diagnostic tests and the data it submits to international health authorities.
The low risk countries are classified as having a real reproduction number that’s lower than 1, a small number of new cases (lower than one per 100 thousand inhabitants), small number of deaths (under 5 per 100 thousand inhabitants and the classification of sporadic or cluster cases. It also includes a satisfactory programme of diagnostic tests (more than 3 thousand per 100 thousand inhabitants).
As such, the low risk countries by classification, are
Malta-Greece-Bulgaria-Norway-Austria-Finland-Slovenia-Hungary-Israel-Denmark-Germany and Lithuania.
Comparatively to the low risk countries, the higher risk ones, based on the same factors, are:
Switzerland-The Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Croatia and Estonia.
The health ministry notes that this classification might change at any time based on the volatile pandemic. So an upgraded list will be made public at regular intervals.
