Introduction in Cyprus of the institution of "test to stay" - What it is and how it works

Decisions and measures, which will aim on the one hand the protection of hospitals and on the other the continuation of the courses with physical presence, are expected to be taken at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers, while today the Minister of Health, Michalis Hadjipandelas, is expected to meet with the members of the Advisory Scientific Committee, to whom he will submit his own proposals and at the same time ask for their opinion on whether or not stricter restrictions should be imposed for the next period. 

In terms of education and after yesterday's first day and the counting of absences, both for students and teachers, the Ministries of Health and Education have been put on alert looking for ways in which schools will remain in operation and the Government will not be obliged for the third consecutive school year to implement e-learning.

In fact, as we are informed, the Minister of Health had a meeting with his close associates yesterday afternoon and they analyzed the data in both the education and the Health system and came to preliminary proposals, which are expected to be studied in detail today.

In terms of education, according to information from "F", the Ministry of Health is oriented to introduction in Cyprus of the institution of "test to stay", that is, in free translation, a test for the student or teacher to stay in school.

According to the proposal that started yesterday, when a positive incident is detected in a department, students / contacts and teachers / contacts of the case will be tested at the same time (most likely a self-test scenario with which the school will supply the units Ministry of Health) and those who have a negative effect will remain in order and the rest will be isolated as positive events. The procedure will be followed for another three days to ensure that there are no cases in the classroom during the lesson.

This proposal is currently being processed, as it is necessary to prepare properly to enable the implementation of this measure. It is reported, however, that this practice has been followed since the previous school year by several countries both inside and outside the European Union.

However, the Ministry of Education was also alerted after yesterday's first day of reopening of schools. In fact, the special inter-ministerial committee met in an extraordinary manner, in which representatives of the Ministries of Health and Education participate, which studied the data and mainly the protocols followed in the schools in the cases in which it is located. increased number of cases in specific departments or schools.

According to information from "Φ", after a study of the data, a suggestion was put on the table, based on which, at least in Primary Education where possible, in cases where a teacher is absent and there is no possibility to replace him, its section will be closed and the children will attend their lessons remotely. The practice has already been applied in some cases and it seems that it will probably be submitted as a proposal to the Minister by the Minister of Education Prodromos Prodromou.

However, during yesterday's first day of school reopening, the percentages of absences in terms of students, according to the Ministry of Education, were quite high, with kindergartens recording a percentage of absences 29%, Primary Education rate 19% and Secondary Education 19%.

Of course, the absence of students is not so much a headache for the Ministry of Education, as the absences of teachers who need to be replaced, with the problem being located mainly in Secondary Education.

In terms of taking additional measures, as reported by "F", at this stage, the Government rather will avoid any further tightening of existing restrictions, without, however, ruling out the extraordinary convening of a Council of Ministers at the end of the week if the epidemiological data so require. For this reason, yesterday the Minister of Health and his close associates agreed that the assessment of the situation will be done on a daily basis and everything will be judged mainly by the situation that will prevail in the hospitals on Thursday night.

However, in case it is deemed necessary to implement stricter measures next week, the Ministry of Health has already prepared a relevant list of suggestions.

The severity of the patients' condition did not change 

By last night, the number of hospitalized patients had reached 244 with 86 being treated in serious condition. As the spokesman of the State Health Services Organization (OKYPY), Charalambos Charilaou, stated in his statements to "F", "what we observe is that the severity of the incidents we have in our hospitals has not changed. That is, when we have around 80 patients daily in Intensive Care Units or Intensive Care Units, this means that the severity of the symptoms these people have remains at the same level as we had before and should probably be taken for granted at this time. the fact that we also treat patients with the "Omicron" mutation and not only with the "Delta" mutation.

Encouraging, according to Mr. Charilaou, "the fact that although we have around 35 new admissions a day we also have 20-25 discharges at the same time and this gives us the opportunity to prepare and intervene without panic, where we need to be. In other words, we have a steady but slow increase and this helps a lot in managing the situation ".

A headache for OKYPY is the ever-increasing number of health professionals who are absent from hospitals, either because they are infected with the coronavirus or because they are reported as case contacts. Yesterday, as we are informed, at least 200 nurses were absent on a nationwide basis.

Meanwhile, 34 respirators arrived in Cyprus yesterday which will be distributed to the Intensive Care Units of state hospitals. Some of the ventilators may replace existing equipment and others will be used if needed due to a further increase in the number of intubated patients. Yesterday, in addition to the 26 intubated patients with coronavirus, 18 patients who are described as "post-covid" continued to be treated in the ventilator.

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