The detection of 122 cases on Tuesday caused shock and should mean an alarm, said to Petros, the Professor of Microbiology / Molecular Virology of the Medical School of the University of Nicosia Dr. Petros Karagiannis, expressing his personal position that this is due to the. He called on the people to observe the measures of self-protection and protocols and to be vaccinated in order to be shielded against the disease.
"Unfortunately, the 122 cases were a shocking result. It must mean an alarm. If we do not gather after the relaxations and the over-relaxation of the people, the situation will escape. "Those who have been vaccinated may think they will not be infected and are not as careful as they used to be," he said.
At the moment, noted Professor Karagiannis, we do not know which of those who tested positive were vaccinated. "I guess most people are unvaccinated and this should be taken seriously by those who are procrastinating on whether or not they will be vaccinated, to think twice and thrice because if we start with an outbreak from now on, think about what will happen in the autumn," he added.
He noted that there is a delay in vaccination among young people, who, as he said, believe that if they get sick they will pass it relatively painlessly while on the other hand, they are the ones who will spread the virus in their homes, at work.
Asked if the increase in cases is due to the Indian mutation, Dr. Karagiannis said that "my opinion is probably yes. As in the case of the English executive when we started to see an increase in cases we assumed he was the English executive. At the moment, this is the Indian executive, who we know has been in the community since April ".
He explained that with the opening of the airports and the arrival of tourists we will have to deal with more cases of cases. "Several are detected at the gates, some days we have double-digit numbers, so I believe that surveillance at our airports should be stricter and more intensive," he said.
He said that at the moment most of the tourists entering are from the Russian market, where we now know that the vaccination coverage is only 10%. Therefore, he pointed out, we must be very careful, the negative test certificates they bring to be timely and valid and also to be subjected to random sampling as many as possible.
Asked if we would have a fourth wave in the autumn, he said "this will depend on how the current outbreak develops".
Dr. Karagiannis said that the tourist season of Summer is also in danger, which would be a breath of fresh air for the economy, noting that if suddenly the number of cases rises again and where we expected to be on the green list, we will remain in the orange and maybe end up in red.
"What needs to be done and we need to understand is that vaccines are the only barrier we can put against the virus and we know they are effective," he said.
Asked to comment on what will happen if the rise in cases continues, he said that there will be further warnings in the world. "We will see from the analysis of the positive cases which age groups it concerns, if there are chains, how extensive these chains are and of course we will try to determine where these people got stuck from. Which will show us how much the protocols in various places of activity are observed because it is enough to take a walk and you see that many no longer wear masks outdoors and even in places where there is enough gathering of people ".
He cited the example of Israel, which, although doing well and removing the masks indoors and outdoors, is now showing an increase in the number of cases.
"So care is needed even if the vaccination coverage is high enough. "What I want to emphasize is that the vaccination coverage must continue at a faster pace so that we are fully shielded," he concluded.