Filenews 11 January 2022 - by Marilena Panagi
Decisions and measures, which will aim on the one hand at the protection of hospitals and on the other hand the continuation of courses with physical presence, are expected to be taken at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers, while today the Minister of Health, Michalis Hadjipantelas, is expected to meet with the members of the Advisory Scientific Committee, in which he will submit his own proposals and at the same time ask for their opinion on whether they should be imposed. or not more stringent restrictions for the next period.
As far as education is concerned, and after yesterday's first day and the counting of absences, both in students and teachers, the Ministries of Health and Education have been put on alert looking for ways in which schools will remain in operation and the Government will not be obliged for the third consecutive school year to implement tele-education.
In fact, as we are informed, the Minister of Health had a meeting yesterday afternoon with his close associates and they analyzed the data in both education and the health system and came up with preliminary proposals, which are expected to be studied in detail today.
As far as education is concerned, as reported by "F", the Ministry of Health is oriented towards the introduction in Cyprus of the institution of "test to stay",i.e. in free translation, tests so that the student or the teacher can remain in school.
According to the proposal that began to take shape yesterday, when a positive case is detected in a department, students/contacts and teachers/contacts of the case will be tested at the same time (a more likely scenario with self-tests with which the Ministry of Health will supply the school units) and those who have a negative result will remain in the classroom. and the rest will be isolated as positive cases. The procedure will be followed for another three days to ensure that there are no cases in the classroom during the lesson.
This proposal is currently being drawn up, as it is necessary to prepare properly to enable this measure to be implemented. It is reported, however, that this practice has been followed since the previous school year by several countries both within and outside the European Union.
However, the Ministry of Education was also put on alert after yesterday's first day of reopening schools. In fact, the special interministerial committee, in which representatives of the Ministries of Health and Education participate, met as an emergency, which studied the data and especially the protocols followed in schools in cases where an increased number of cases is detected in specific departments or school units.
According to information provided by "F", after studying the data, a recommendation was put on the table, based on which, at least in Primary Education where it is possible, in cases where a teacher is absent and there is no possibility to replace him, his department will close and the children will attend their lessons remotely. The practice has already been applied in some cases and it seems that it will probably be submitted as a proposal to the Ministry by the Minister of Education, Prodromos Prodromos.
However, during yesterday's first day of reopening of schools, the rates of absences in terms of students, according to the Ministry of Education, were quite high, with kindergartens recording an absence rate of 29%, Primary Education 19% and Secondary Education 19%.
Of course, a big headache for the Ministry of Education is not so much the absences of students, but the absences of teachers who need to be replaced, with the problem being mainly found in secondary education.
As far as the adoption of additional measures is concerned, as reported by "F", at this stage, the Government will probably avoid any additional tightening of the existing restrictions, without however excluding the extraordinary convening of a Council of Ministers at the end of the week if the epidemiological data require it. That is why yesterday the Minister of Health and his close associates agreed that the assessment of the situation will be carried out on a daily basis and everything will be judged mainly by the situation that will prevail in the hospitals on Thursday night.
However, in case it is deemed necessary to implement more stringent measures next week, the Ministry of Health has already prepared a list of recommendations.
The severity of the patients' condition did not change
By last night, the number of hospitalized patients had reached 244 with 86 hospitalized in serious condition. As the spokesman of the Organization of State Health Services (CYSEC) Charalambos Charilaou said in his statements to "F", "what we observe is that the severity of the cases we have in our hospitals has not changed. That is, when we have around 80 patients daily in conditions of Increased Care Units or in Intensive Care Units, this means that the severity of the symptoms that these people have remains at the same levels as those we had previously and we probably have to take for granted at this moment the fact that we are also hospitalized patients with the mutation "Omikron" and not only with a mutation "Delta".
Encouraging, according to Mr. Harilaou, "the fact that although we have around 35 new admissions a day we also have 20-25 discharges and this enables us to prepare and intervene without panic, where and when we should. In other words, we have a steady but slow increase and that helps a lot in the management of the situation."
A headache for the CYSO is the ever-increasing number of health professionals who are absent from hospitals, either because they are infected with the coronavirus, or because they are declared as contacts of a case. Yesterday, as we are informed, at least 200 nurses were absent nationwide.
Meanwhile, 34 ventilators arrived in Cyprus yesterday and will be distributed in the Intensive Care Units of state hospitals. Some of the ventilators may replace existing equipment and the rest will be used if needed due to a further increase in the number of intubated patients. Yesterday, in addition to the 26 intubated coronavirus patients, 18 patients who are described as "post-covid" continued to be hospitalised on the ventilator.
