[ad_1]
Elias Mosialos emphasizes in liberal.gr that we must defeat the coronavirus with small losses, strategy, reasonable interventions and a plan to strengthen those who will suffer the consequences of a confinement. He considers that this new quarantine should be of short duration, emphasizing that the limit for its implementation is the point where, from there and beyond the health system and especially the ICU, it cannot be met.
We must be careful to exit the pandemic adventure with the fewest losses, until there is a cure or a vaccine. As for the social consequences of the pandemic, they will last for years, says the professor of Health Policy and director of the health department at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Interview with Anna Papadomarkaki
How concerning is the spread of the pandemic?
The pandemic is evolving rapidly in many countries. Our country as a whole is still in a relatively better position compared to northern European countries, but that does not mean that we will not have problems soon. We will have. And for that we must do everything possible to reduce the losses from the pandemic.
In the first phase we acted quickly and performed better than many other countries. But now things are more difficult. Greece will not disappear due to the pandemic, as neither did Italy nor Spain, which had a large number of victims, disappeared in the first phase of the pandemic. But the wounds in the social fabric of these countries will last for years. Therefore, we must be careful. So that, when we have safe and effective vaccines, we can get out of this adventure with very few losses and without the health system collapsing.
In the end, the many small measures, as the situation showed, did not turn out to be very effective. What happens?
The objective is to implement public health measures to reduce the spread of the pandemic, without having disproportionate effects on the economic and social life and the psychology of citizens. When milder measures don’t work, more stringent measures are needed.
Several countries with an epidemiological course heavier than us have already implemented, announced or are preparing a universal blockade. As the evolution of the pandemic in our country has become more unfavorable throughout the country, the issue of confinement in most of the country or universally was raised as a necessity for things, that is, for the evolution of the own pandemic. The blockage, however, should be short-lived. We must defeat the coronavirus with small losses, strategy, determination, patience and reasonable interventions and a plan to empower those who will suffer the consequences.
In other words, what is the limit imposed by this new blockade on Greece, as the one that seems to have been decided by the government?
The limit is the point where beyond that the health system and especially the ICU, cannot comply. Obviously, this was evaluated by the experts of the committee of the Ministry of Health, the doctors of the ICU and the government. In Italy, doctors had to decide who would be intubated in order to hope to live, because the health system could not withstand the excessive pressure. We shouldn’t see situations like this in Greece. However, I repeat. The blockage should be short-lived. Effective measures also have drastic costs.
The issue is being debated across Europe. Do the multiple discussions run out of time and we find ourselves again in front of images of Bergamo and New York?
Timely action always has better results. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the scientific community around the world, even in February, did not seem to realize the threat of a new virus and underestimated the problem. A very small minority warned of the danger. That is why some countries were unprepared when the pandemic spread to Europe and then the Americas. But now there is better information for citizens. A large part of citizens belonging to vulnerable groups pay more attention, while patients are better cared for in hospitals. At the same time, however, a small percentage of citizens question the existence of the pandemic and are not interested in the implementation of public health measures. Some seek easy solutions or take refuge in conspiracy theories. I wish there were easy solutions, because who doesn’t want them? However, I hope that these practices will be drastically reduced so that our country does not need to have a continuous or broader long-term local lockdown, until we have sufficient, safe and effective vaccines.
The WHO recommends that we face the virus. What must we do to achieve it?
The WHO says nothing new. For example, in Greece, public health measures taken from the beginning when there was little spread in the community, put us ahead of the virus. This quick response affected the blocking time.
What I mean; Ten days after the first lockdown was imposed, I said it should be short-lived. There was a trend in the scientific community in many countries that closures, in all countries, regardless of dispersion, should last 3 months. But this was and is the case for countries that were slow to take action or that unknowingly faced widespread dispersion.
Respectively, I then said that a national plan and a national mobilization are urgently needed to deal with the coronavirus. In other words, to stay one step ahead of the virus, we would need a specific and multidimensional plan for the adoption and implementation of interventions, depending on the evolution of the pandemic. This increases reflections to control dispersion.
[ad_2]
