The increased contagiousness of the virus in the community is a matter of great concern, with the number of daily cases being in the four digits.
Speaking on the front page, Dr. Maria Koliou referred to the new mutation that appeared in France but also to the return of children to school.
Initially asked about the new strain that appeared in France, he said, "What is known so far is that the transmissibility is not as high as that of Omicron, so a mutation that does not have the same transmissibility is not very likely to spread."
Speaking about the increased cases in Cyprus, he said that "what we are interested in is not to put pressure on the health system, that is, not to have hospital admissions, something that will greatly worsen the situation.
"But we should know that no matter how mild Omicron is, it finds us in a phase where our health systems are already loaded because of Delta. "What helps us in each case is our vaccination coverage."
Asked why they stick so easily and those who have been vaccinated, she said: "We have a vaccine that is excellent in preventing serious illness but can not protect against the disease. So we focus on what is more serious, not to get seriously ill. We can not help but catch the disease.
Regarding the opening of schools, he said, "We have lived and we know what it means not to have an education that is done in practice, we have students who will lose a third year if they stay at home, we have children for whom they are preparing for university. and from here their careers and their lives are judged.
Research has shown that it is psychologically destructive to keep children at home, so we said to give children a chance to go to school. That is why when the proposal was made to open the schools, a good mapping was done for teacher adequacy to fill the gaps ".
Closing and talking about the increased cases of children being treated, he said that what could be done is to open other hospitals that accommodate children with covid-19.