Intervention on the Front Page was made by the academic professor of Molecular Virology of the Department of Biological Sciences of the University of Cyprus and Full Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, Dr. Leontios Kostrikis.
Specifically, commenting on the detection of a case in a school, which concerns a student, he stated that it was located through tracking, while the second case was the grandmother of the student in question. He described the case as individual, while explaining that the close contacts of the student at school will be tracked and there we will see how well the measures were observed.
Regarding a possible second coronavirus wave, he explained that there are three possible scenarios in the literature. The good, the bad and the ugly. The good thing is what we have now, where the epidemic is in the west and there will be some small revivals. The bad thing is that the virus does not go out abruptly and is prolonged in the long run with significant relapses and will bother us until the end of the year and maybe more. Ugly is a new wave of virus that will come from abroad and start a new epidemic, like the one in March. However, the professor expressed the view that we will not have a new wave because if we compare the epidemic with the other two similar ones (SARS and MERS), we will see that they started, ended and disappeared. He pointed out that we may have small relapses by the end of the year and then we will have a vaccine.
Asked about the TB vaccine, he said it was a clinical study based on the observation that those vaccinated appear to be protected against the virus, for unknown reasons, but there may be immune similarities between the TB parasite and the virus. He explained that it was a good vaccine and that it was safe and that it might prove to be a good immunological protection before the vaccine came out.
Regarding the opening of kindergartens, he replied that in general we have an excellent epidemiological picture that surprises him, who is by nature optimistic. He added that we have opened many things and the epidemiological curve remains stable, so we can load it a little more. Thus, the opening of the kindergartens is part of the third phase on June 9, but the scientific team was asked to expand the 20.000 tests and to carry out tests on the parents of the children as well as on kindergarten teachers.
Asked about gyms, he said they would open at some point, but it is more difficult because people are exhaling more air and distances may need to be longer.
Finally, he said that the continuation will be the lifting of measures for many things, but we must be careful, since we still have the opening of airports and roadblocks.
Source: sigmalive