Decisive 24 hours for the possibility of additional measures which, as the Health Minister indicated yesterday, will be given in the direction of tightening. In the midst of the festive season and in the shadow of the spike in cases and the spread of the Omicron mutation, the Ministry of Health and the Scientific Advisory Committee are carefully monitoring and analysing the epidemiological data in order to obtain a clear picture which will determine the way forward.
Everyone agrees that the "guide" for making any decision remains the number of hospitalisations, which currently remains at a satisfactory level with the OCHA doing paper exercises for the day ahead.
For now, with all epidemiological indicators hitting red, all options remain open. As of Sunday evening, members of the Scientific Advisory Committee had not received an "invitation" to meet at the Ministry of Health today, which is expected to be decided before noon.
"If it transpires that the cases and the positivity rate are high, as well as the hospitalizations - if these two are increased - then we will meet with the Scientific Advisory Committee to see if we need to take additional measures," Michael Hadjipandela said on Sunday, speaking from the Reference Hospital where he was visiting.
Regarding the Omicron cases, the Health Minister said that so far he had no information about the existence of a patient with Omicron, but since last week Ministry officials had been instructed that checks were being carried out on those hospitalised in state hospitals with coronavirus to see if there were any patients with the Omicron mutation.
"If there are no hospitalizations with Omicron, then it is good news," he said, adding that this "is an issue we are monitoring daily and we are awaiting the results of patients with coronavirus who are in government hospitals next week," he said."
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"No school closures"
The fact that based on the latest National Report, a large number of positive cases are detected in schools, puts officials on alert, at a time when the decision has been taken to extend the return of students to schools to January 10, instead of the scheduled 7
Speaking on Ant1's main news programme on Sunday, the Health Minister, when asked whether the possibility of "closing" schools to avoid a greater spread of the virus was being considered, gave a negative answer.
"There is no such possibility, because the measures we have taken for the schools have shown that they have worked well. We have had increased outbreaks, but the goal of keeping schools open has been achieved," Hajipandela said.
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