Protest against Covid vaccinations, restrictions from Paphos to Nicosia

[Dominic]

That report doesn't state that the deaths were long term hospitalisations though, which is what HiC said. Everybody already knows that Omicron is less nasty then the earlier variants. I wanted to know where the long-term hospitalisations came from.

It did however state the following: “But around four patients infected with Delta are admitted every day to a state hospital,”.

So Delta hasn't gone away yet.

[Steve - SJD]

Of course it may well be that the majority of those dying at the moment have no history of vaccination - which may put a different perpective on things for some. Cheers. Steve

That is precisely the case: typically 70% of those dying from Covid in Cyprus hospitals are unvaccinated. It is reported daily in all the Cyprus newspapers.

The vaccination status of those that have died is unfortunately not reported daily - the 70% is the number of unvaccinated covid patients in hospital.

News tonight (Cyprus Mail below) is that there are no Covid sufferers in Cyprus ICUs, so contrary to what some believe, ICUs are not stuffed full of Covid sufferers, though there are 'post-Covid' sufferers, which (Google tells me) are conditions arising from the earlier Covid illness.

There are 30 patients in the ICU's currently according to the Health Ministry - whilst they are not infectious they are intubated.

They are intubated as a direct result of covid so I would suggest they are still suffering the consequences. Obviously dependent on the length of time they have been ill, in hospital and eventually in ICU will determine whether they are still infectious. I doubt anyone thinking of numbers of people in the ICU's have differentiated based on infection status - after all infectious or not they are still in ICU.

It may not have, but sense of proportion here: that's 4 per day out of a population of 950,000 or 0.0000042%.

August 2021 saw record 80 deaths
January 2022 saw 104 deaths
February so far 39 deaths

We need to accept: while Covid will be with us for years to come - possibly forever - it has lost it's nasty initial severity

At this time, in Cyprus, the numbers above would suggest otherwise - so whilst in principle I agree it may be prudent to base it on the data.

Cheers

Steve

[Jim B]

Of course it may well be that the majority of those dying at the moment have no history of vaccination - which may put a different perpective on things for some. Cheers. Steve

That is precisely the case: typically 70% of those dying from Covid in Cyprus hospitals are unvaccinated. It is reported daily in all the Cyprus newspapers.

The vaccination status of those that have died is unfortunately not reported daily - the 70% is the number of unvaccinated covid patients in hospital.

News tonight (Cyprus Mail below) is that there are no Covid sufferers in Cyprus ICUs, so contrary to what some believe, ICUs are not stuffed full of Covid sufferers, though there are 'post-Covid' sufferers, which (Google tells me) are conditions arising from the earlier Covid illness.

There are 30 patients in the ICU's currently according to the Health Ministry - whilst they are not infectious they are intubated.

They are intubated as a direct result of covid so I would suggest they are still suffering the consequences. Obviously dependent on the length of time they have been ill, in hospital and eventually in ICU will determine whether they are still infectious. I doubt anyone thinking of numbers of people in the ICU's have differentiated based on infection status - after all infectious or not they are still in ICU.

It may not have, but sense of proportion here: that's 4 per day out of a population of 950,000 or 0.0000042%.

August 2021 saw record 80 deaths
January 2022 saw 104 deaths
February so far 39 deaths

We need to accept: while Covid will be with us for years to come - possibly forever - it has lost it's nasty initial severity

At this time, in Cyprus, the numbers above would suggest otherwise - so whilst in principle I agree it may be prudent to base it on the data.

Cheers

Steve

Your saying more or less what I've been trying to say.
We've been going through this pandemic for over 2 years so what's another few months
Delta is still about and still killing people as is Omikron, the viruses are still dangerous and being blaze' about them is not the answer.

[Dominic]

It may not have, but sense of proportion here: that's 4 per day out of a population of 950,000 or 0.0000042%.

1% = 1/100
0.1% = 1/1000
0.01% = 1/10000
0.001% = 1/100000
0.0001% - 1/1000000

You were out by a factor of 100. And that is a daily figure, not total.

And still no citation for this?

"It has been reported that these people were long term hospitalisations"

[jeba]

The fact that Omicron is milder than Delta doesn´t mean it´s mild. If you´re unvaccinated it still poses a significant risk of hospitalisation. I guess this is the reason they are reluctant to open up, because otherwise hospital capacity will be brought to the brink because there is still a significant number of unvaccinated.
I wonder how patients who are intubated aren´t at an ICU? To me, that seems like a terminology problem. If I had to be intubated, I wouldn´t care if the ward I was lying was called ICU or whatever.

I also don´t understand why they only mention intubated patients and not those on ECMOs (extracorporal membrane oxygenation device; "artificial lungs") and why Biontech´s announcement that they will offer an upgraded version of their vaccine which will offer protection against Omicron as sson as next month has hardly been reported. For me personally, that´s a reason to keep my guard up. I had already started to go to the gym again and swap my FFP3 masks for the blue ones (as I thought it´s better catching the virus shortly after the booster than later) but when I read this I decided to stick it out until I can get that upgrade. If I can avoid it, I don´t even want a mild disease because what may be described as mild by others may not be regarded mild by myself.

[jeba]

double post deleted

[galexinda]

Coronavirus: Third jab coverage falls well short of double vaxxed

The number of those over 18 who have received the third shot is around 62 per cent
In the 5-11 year-old age group, 9.8 per cent have been vaccinated, in the 12-15 year-old group 46.1 per cent, while in the 16-17 year-old group 56.5 per cent.

https://cyprus-mail.com/2022/02/14/coro ... le-vaxxed/

[Steve - SJD]

No citation because two people posted after me to say that they had read the same thing.

Just for the purposes of clarity - if i'm included in the two, then I wasn't saying I had read the same thing.

You were suggesting that the current high rate of deaths was as a result of the previous Delta variant - I
linked to an article showing that at that time the dominant varirant in the ICU was Delta - they are
two different things as noted. I don't know what the variant was of those that have died recently was.

The fact that there are no current Covid cases in ICU (as Cyprus Mail states) but are 'post-Covid' cases in ICU bears me out.

Come on HIC that's just semantics - and the CM doesn't say that there are no current covid cases - indeed it said
clearly yesterday:

"31 patients who stopped being infectious continue to be intubated in ICUs due to coronavirus."

The infection period only lasts a number of days and this has always been the case - it's just that now you are noting whether
the patient is infectious or not - which has little to do with it as they are still taking up a bed in the ICU.

+3 Deaths to add to February's toll.

Cheers

Steve

[galexinda]

Going against that, I read the other day that in Africa, where there has been minimal vaccination, numbers there are easing off. So maybe the virus is running out of steam?

Perhaps the numbers are easing off because it has been over the summer months in Africa?

Which is why the scientists were always cautious to jump to the conclusion when Omicron first appeared in Africa that it was a milder form of Covid and therefore harder to predict the outcome in Europe and other Northern Hemisphere countries.

[jeba]

Perhaps the numbers are easing off because it has been over the summer months in Africa?

This is one of the things which has asolutely baffled scientists; they really have not got a clue as to why Africa has got off so (relatively) lightly, given that vaccination is at a very low level there. Just as well though.

A big part of the reason is that they have a much younger population (in South Africa only 5.5% are aged above 65 years, as opposed to Cyprus´14.4%) and that (at least in South Africa, from where I remember reading data) about 90% of the population have meanwhile acquired immunity, a minority via vaccination and the majority via infection. The rest may be explained by the fact that there is not much testing going on.

[Dominic]

It's the "long term hospitalisations" bit I have asked you to clarify. This implies that people are no longer getting sick with Delta, and that those dying from Delta have been in hospital for a long time. My understanding from the various articles is that Delta is still around.

[Jim B]

It said on Sky News yesterday that Covid has spread like wildfire in Denmark after they dropped controls like the UK are planning to do.
As I'm typing this an emenent professor on Sky is saying the Government is moving too fast and that's the general consensus amongst the medical fraternity whereas many believe it's a political decision to save Johnson made by Johnson.

[Dominic]

And what were the hospitalisation rates like in Denmark, and the death rates? Saying it spread like wildfire without those figures is pretty pointless. It begs the question: so what?

[Discobolus]

These UK politicians keep coming on carrying on about cases dropping etc but none of them mention that testing has reduced from 1.3 -1.4 million to 800,000 .

[jagwheels]

You are all probably awaire that the UK government has been issuing free lateral flow test kits. To be honest I wasn't too bothered but daughter insisted so wife does it weekly but we don't send the results hence government figures can be misleading. Do they have a similar scheme in Cyprus?

[Lincoln]

yes in Cyprus we can get the free RAT kits. They are for personal use only. I also believe that they are only free to those who are registered on GESY (NHS)

[galexinda]

yes in Cyprus we can get the free RAT kits. They are for personal use only. I also believe that they are only free to those who are registered on GESY (NHS)

They are also free to residents not eligible for GESY but have to be collected from General Hospital rather than pharmacy.

Here is the link showing where the free test kits can be collected for GESY and non GESY residents who meet the criteria:

https://www.pio.gov.cy/coronavirus/uplo ... kitsEN.pdf

[Jim B]

https://www.reuters.com/business/health ... 022-01-31/

The link to the report on Covid in Denmark.