Editor’s note
One year after the coronavirus pandemic outbreak on March 9, 2020 the Minister of Health, Ogerta Manastirliu sees light at the end of the tunnel.
In a post on FB on Tuesday she said despite the hardships doctors have never given up in this challenging year of the pandemic that humanity encounters once in a century.
“Let us all help together by not lowering our vigilance to bring to an end the war with the invisible enemy with patience and sacrifice,”
the minister said without mentioning a word on the debilitating conditions in Covid hospitals and dramatic shortage of medical staff and medicaments.
The balance sheet reveals that there were about 1,450 fatalities and 82,607 infected people with coronavirs since March 9 last year, but opposition has accused government of hiding 6,000 fatalities which were denounced even by some doctors.
However Manastirliu said in her message that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting clearer with the intensification of anti – COVID vaccination.
Speaking about the situation, changes, new cases and compliance with Covid-19 measures on a local TV on Tuesday infectionist doctor Pëllumb Pipero was not as much optimistic as the minister. According to him the situation is out of control. While focusing on the tightening of measures Pipero said it is important to restrict movement over the weekend, adding that it is not for lockdown.
“For me, travel outside Tirana should be banned. On weekends, there should be a ban on passing from one region to another, as the overcrowding of the premises leads to the transmission of Covid-19,” he said. As a doctor his main indicator is not the number of cases of infections, but the number of hospitalized cases.
“The number of those who are hospitalized is real, of serious cases, of those who lose their lives. These are indicators that concern me as a doctor,” he explained.
In a comment on the current situation in Albania, Pipero stressed that it was expected that after the holidays there would be higher numbers of infections.
Pipero predicts that the numbers will be on the rise during the first half of March.
“There are some factors that make me optimistic about the end of April, whether it is the vaccine whose process is ongoing, but I believe that rising temperatures will also play a role,” he said.
In any case the general view including of the people who are suffering most from the disease the escape is the massive vaccination something which this government seems to fail to carry out as the shortages of vaccines are drastic and the alternatives for other sources like Chinese or Russian vaccines are not clear because of the politicization of securing vaccines being dependent on Western scarce supplies.
/argumentum.al
