Our View: Time for government to liberate us from stranglehold of the virus advisors

The general manager of the Federation of Employers and Industrialists (OEV), Michalis Antoniou should be congratulated for speaking so directly about the need to end all the measures in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19. The time has come, he told the state broadcaster on Wednesday, to open up the economy, something that has become a matter of urgency in the current, adverse economic conditions caused by the sanctions and counter-sanctions sparked by the war in Ukraine.

Antoniou was the first person in a position of influence to make a case for the end of the stifling measures that involve hundreds of micro-regulations that individuals and businesses have to comply with for no justifiable reason. In the first quarter of this year, there were 250,000 cases reported, without putting the health service under any pressure, while Cyprus had one of the lowest Covid case fatality rates in the world; six people were intubated according the health ministry data for Tuesday.

Why was the health ministry persisting with SafePasses, limits on the number of people in indoor spaces, intensive testing, quarantining of close contacts and work from home for 25 per cent of employees of a business? Antoniou mentioned that 10 to 15 per cent of the workforce are off work, because they were a ‘close contact’, tested positive or were looking after children that were a close contact or a positive case. He also highlighted the absurdity of people staying off work with symptoms of a light cold, or no symptoms at all, because they had tested positive. It was unprecedented for people to miss work with mild cold.

Only the members of the scientific team cannot seem to understand the disruption caused to businesses by these measures and the cost to the economy. Yet the scientists are still advising excessive caution to the government and from what emerged after Wednesday’s meeting with the health minister. They, reportedly, proposed the lifting of some measures, like the ludicrous wearing of masks outdoors, which nobody observes, the 25 per cent working from home rule, a reduction in the testing but want to keep the SafePass in place for most venues as well as the seven-day quarantine.

We hope that rationality will prevail at the council of ministers meeting that will take decisions about the measures on Thursday. Ministers should ignore the scientists and take the brave step of scrapping all the measures now, as has happened in many European countries, which have also disbanded their scientific teams. There is no reason to wait any longer – the number of cases, most of which have very mild symptoms, are falling, temperatures are much higher and there is no pressure on hospital ICUs.

The time has arrived for the government to liberate itself and the population from the oppressive, excessive caution of the scientific team and return the country to the normality we have been deprived of for two years.