Filenews 1 July 2021
The cases of coronavirus will increase and in the coming days the Professor of Microbiology/Moleculariology of the Medical School of the University of Nicosia Dr. Petros Karagiannis, who calls on young people to be vaccinated by shielding themselves and those around them.
In a statement, Dr Karagiannis said there had been a sharp increase in cases. In the last three days, we had three hundred cases plus, which does not inspire optimism in the coming days.
"From what I understand there are still a lot of people who may not have gone for tests even though they know they had contacts and are likely to have symptoms as well," he said. He added that young people should be sensitive to the fact that they are compromising all the good work done so far to control the pandemic in Cyprus and undermine it with some attitude and recklessness.
Asked if there would be a reduction in cases, the Professor said that "reductions have been seen in the past only by restrictive measures. At the moment everything is open, it seems that there are not enough checks on who enters and who comes out in places where there is a crowd of mainly young people, who do not sit but instead move, dance, have fun and shout."
Therefore, he added, much attention needs to be paid to such activities because it is from here that several chains have started that are active at the moment.
Asked if restrictive measures would be put in place, Dr Karagiannis said that "I do not know what the Cabinet will decide tomorrow. What delays the introduction of restrictive measures is vaccination coverage, which continues to shield the highest age groups and the virus moves to ages where vaccination coverage is low. So if we don't manage to get the youngest to get vaccinated then we're not going to see the number of cases drop.'
In relation to the imposition of restrictive measures, he said that at the moment we must give common sense the opportunity to prevail. "If there is no prudence and contemplation and we understand what can happen between now and September and later then things will not improve."
I advise young people, Dr Karagiannis said, if they will go to places where there is a gathering of many people to go with negative tests and implement self-protection measures.
Asked what is expected to happen in September, he pointed out that "if we do not increase our vaccination coverage, we will continue to have problems with flare-ups. On the other hand, if vaccination coverage increases and we exceed 50% of the coverage in the younger groups, we will be shielded."
Cna
