The first message from the conservative winners is that the management of the coronavirus pandemic will change

Ingrida Šimonytė spoke about it on election night. Gabrielius Landsbergis, for his part, emphasized that the party would start checking COVID-19 data for discrepancies on Election Day.

Earlier, the Liberal Movement and the Freedom Party, which are currently participating in the coalition negotiations, also spoke about the changes in the strategy for managing the pandemic.

Changing the way a pandemic is managed is one of the first steps

On Election Day Sunday, I. Šimonytė said that one of his first tasks was to change the way the pandemic was managed to be more transparent.

“First of all, it is probably necessary to change the form of management itself, in our opinion, and we have said that many times, first of all it must be very clear who talks to whom, what and how decisions are made.

Today we lack transparency and clarity, who advises, or at all, why the Government chooses one or the other council and whose word is decisive in this situation ”, said I. Šimonytė.

However, on election night he refused to detail possible quarantine decisions and stressed the need to consult with specialists.

See reasons to verify data

That same night, Gabrielius Landsbergis, chairman of the Lithuanian Christian National-Democratic Union Party (TS-LKD), spoke about managing the pandemic. He said the Conservatives would verify the COVID-19 data after winning the election.

Gabriel Landsberg is suspicious that it was on Election Day that the number of coronavirus infections was misrepresented. According to the politician, the fact that the National Public Health Center (NVSC) announced the number of infections in the afternoon and corrected them in the afternoon may be related to the fact that perhaps on election day the objective was to hide the real situation of the country.

“It is very surprising that the day Lithuania did not count the cases is precisely the day of the second round of the elections. Such a coincidence is more than disappointing. It is already clear that people on social media are posing the hypothesis of whether it was an attempt to hide the real situation by alleviating it a bit without reducing the chances of people going to the elections, “the conservative leader told LRT television.

In general, according to him, it can be said that the rulers’ treatment of the pandemic raised a number of questions.

“In general, the whole management of the epidemic, namely the second wave, raises a lot of questions,” Landsberg said.

Delfi recalls that 415 new cases of coronavirus were reported in the country on Sunday morning. However, in the evening the information was reviewed and it was reported that 603 new cases of COVID-19 were recorded in Lithuania during the last day.

Armonaitė spoke out against the use of harsh measures

Aušrinė Armonaitė also spoke about the need to change the way the pandemic was managed before the second round of the Seimas elections.

“The management of the pandemic is an issue at the government level, so the Minister of Health may be the head of the operations group, but what matters is not only who is in charge, but also how they do it. To protect against the virus, it is necessary to listen to the experts’ arguments, clearly and fully inform the public about the magnitude of the pandemic and cooperate with the private sector or municipalities that can more quickly understand the local situation ”, Eltai, dated October 15th. said A. Armonaitė.

According to her, data on the current coronavirus situation must be constantly collected, analyzed, published and planned for future actions.

“It simply came to our knowledge then. It is not only necessary to make public the number of cases, but also the statistics on complications or asymptomatic cases, diseases among different age groups, etc. This allows for strategic planning of the virus management, at least up to to develop and buy the vaccine, “he said.

A. Armonaitė noted that the application of harsh measures, such as quarantine, fines, etc., had a negative effect on the public’s attitude towards the pandemic and, if the situation continued, reduced the probability of safe behavior.

“Therefore, it is necessary to apply the approach of” learning to live with the virus “not by criminal means, but educational,” said the president of the Freedom Party.

According to her, during the first wave, the Minister of Health ignored private laboratories for a long time, making it impossible to increase the scope of testing. At that time, A. Armonaitė drew attention, companies in general voluntarily helped, bought security measures, they only did it through various initiatives or municipalities, but there was no direct cooperation with SAM.

“It is important to be able to perform the test quickly and without major barriers so that people know their condition and can protect vulnerable groups. In addition, preparing hospitals for the treatment of the COVID-19 virus by providing services in a separate corpus of infectious diseases or in a temporarily designated body, ”said A. Armonaitė.

Čmilytė-Nielsen doubts that the Minister of Health can lead the crisis management

The president of the Liberal Movement questioned whether the position of Health Minister could handle such a complex coronavirus crisis. According to her, the crisis should be managed by a person with a special preparation for crisis management.

“It must be managed by people who have special preparation for crisis management. Is the SAM representative really competent enough to be at the forefront of decision-making in such an extraordinary situation? The situation is related to the crisis management, administration and planning The problem is complex and is not only related to health but also to processes, this is with crisis management.

Does the Minister of Health, whatever it is, have sufficient competence to do so? I don’t know, there is still an open question. But I think that of course we will raise this issue and review it if we have the right to make the decisions entrusted to us by the voters, ”V. Čmilytė-Nielsen told Eltai before the elections.

The politician also noted that Seimas should take more responsibility during the coronavirus crisis.

“I would look at it from a different angle and point out that the Seimas should have a bigger role in decision-making. During the quarantine, the Seimas was pushed away from making a decision, and it was effective for some time and decisions were made more. fast. But hardly democratically. At this point, we criticize such an extension of the quarantine by government decree. The weight of Parliament as the representative of the nation in making such important decisions should increase compared to what it was during the first wave of the It seems to me that the role of the Seimas should definitely increase, because it is the representation of the nation, and the unelected should not make unilateral decisions, “he said.