Filenews 4 January 2021 - by Marilena Panagi
Everyone at okyy on alert on Saturday night. Breathlessly, they were monitoring the situation in the hospitals. The number of patients hospitalized with coronavirus had reached 195 and, given the fact that 200 beds are available in the wards, management and management of the organization were on hand to intervene in case this was deemed necessary.
"We were anxiously monitoring the situation, we had constant communication with the hospitals and we were on alert, since we always keep in mind the number of beds available," OKY spokesman Charalambos Charilaou told "F", adding that "during the night there is always an increased flow of patients to the hospitals and several of those who come for help are finally admitted for hospitalization".
Unfortunately, four more people died (two with the cause of the coronavirus), while during Sunday some discharges were given, resulting yesterday afternoon in the number of hospitalized patients falling to 182,with 45 (28 in the ICU and 17 in the Increased Care Units) in critical condition and the remaining 137 in the wards.
No one, Concluded Mr. Charilaou, "can know what will happen tonight (last night) and how tomorrow's (today's) day will dawn in our hospitals".
The number of daily cases, even with reduced laboratory tests due to public holidays, remains consistently high, while the rate of positivity, i.e. the number of cases detected in relation to the number of checks carried out, also remains at consistently high levels and of course well below safety limits. Yesterday 529 new cases were announced, of which 204 resulted from 2,839 molecular tests and 325 from 9,212 tests with rapid antigen detection tests. The 526 cases were domestic infections and 201 resulted in 2,367 molecular tests involving round-the-clock sampling. The positivity rate ranged yesterday in the provinces from 1.57%-5.47%, while two more cases were detected in a nursing home in Limassol.
The equation was added yesterday to confirm the existence of the new, more contagious strain of coronavirus, also in Cyprus, since 12 of the 19 samples tested by the Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics were found to be related to the VOC 202012/01 strain, which was originally identified in the United Kingdom and has been associated with a higher virus load, faster dispersion and higher communicability of up to 70%.
The data is recorded. Scientists are meeting tonight or tomorrow morning to assess the situation and prepare their suggestions.
The Cabinet meets, as scheduled, on Thursday, although some information yesterday brought the Government to speed up decision-making on Tuesday morning. The ugly epidemiological picture presented by Cyprus, as health minister Konstantinos Ioannou has warned in recent days, is not out of the question that it will eventually lead to a new lockdown, but probably with several differences from the one we experienced last spring, since the local economy does not seem to allow a universal "prohibitive" lockdown, which will also involve support measures for businesses and workers.
The scenarios are many, but nothing has yet been formally discussed. Some information points to the reintroduction of the number 8998 and the sending of SMS by citizens for their movements, without closing the shops, but others deny it. Decisions will be taken in the next 24 hours and certainly within the week, as the weekend ends the decrees that are now in place, while it remains unknown whether primary and secondary school pupils will return to their classrooms next Monday.
As far as vaccinations are concerned, and while the European Union looks like a boiling cauldron, following the latest announcements from the manufacturer and the competent European commission, the Ministry of Health is expected to announce today the start of the second phase of its design involving all persons over 80 years of age.
