Coronavirus: No discussion of further relaxations at experts’ next meeting  

The advisory committee on coronavirus will not be discussing further measure relaxations on its next meeting, a source told the Cyprus News Agency on Saturday.

Scheduled for 4pm on Monday, the meeting will assess the new data recorded in Cyprus and the world in relation to the increase of cases as a result of the spread of Omicron.

The experts will focus on the epidemiological picture in Cyprus and put forward suggestions on the government’s next steps.

So far, none of them have proposed any further relaxations, the source said, as they believe it is still too early, given that the latest relaxations came into force last week.

The current view is that the more relaxations the government decides, the more it will widen the potential for transmission, committee chair Constantinos Tsioutis told CNA later in the day, adding that this might affect other epidemiological factors.

Commenting on the recent increase in the positivity rate, he said that the emergence of Omicron as a dominant strain has subverted a lot of previously held views, like for example that the pandemic was over.

“A lot of us are under the impression that we don’t need to keep to personal protection measures, like masks and social distancing, but we need them more than ever now.”

He said that as the variant is highly contagious, despite the fact that the ratio between deaths and cases is low, the number of daily deaths is still sizeable.

He also pointed out that 25 per cent of Covid deaths were recorded within 2022.

“We need to learn to live with the virus – and what does that look like today? Trying not to limit economic and social activity, without forgetting the basics.”

The advisory committee on vaccines is also due to meet on the same day to deliberate on a fourth dose of the anti-coronavirus vaccine for the immunocompromised – a subject the coronavirus advisory committee will touch on.

 CNA also said that Health Minister Michalis Hadjipantelas will not be attending the next cabinet meeting on Wednesday as he will be on a visit to Istanbul.

In his absence, the suggestion to include nursery schools in the test to stay system will be put forward by Education Minister Prodromos Prodromou.