In the near future, as the Prime Minister said from the floor of Parliament, there will be legislative intervention for the mandatory vaccination of specific groups of workers, after the suggestion of the bioethics committee – within the next week.
The committee – which is expected to decide on public health – will discuss the mandatory vaccination of certain sections of the population, while the issue of the extra freedoms of the fully vaccinated has also been on the government's table.
Of course, government officials are not talking about privileges, but about a series of freedoms that will come as a result of the new rules that will exist in the market from the autumn.
In any case, according to information, the government is not only discussing the mandatory vaccination of health workers and employees in the Elderly Care Units, which is why it has also asked for the help of the Bioethics Committee.
Another social group that seems to be coming to the table is the teachers, about whom the Deputy Minister of Interior, Stelios Petsas, was even asked.
Obligation of the patient to be vaccinated by each doctor
The president of EINAP, Matina Pagoni, expressed her concern about the compulsory vaccination, stating that we should not arrive until September for every doctor to be vaccinated.
In particular, responding to what will happen if this percentage of unvaccinated doctors and nurses continues, and the government requests mandatory vaccination for these professional groups from September, Ms. Pagoni stressed that “We will not let it reach September. It is the duty of the patient to be vaccinated by each doctor. We will not allow as associations to arrive until September. Doctors can not change positions, they come in contact with patients. Because there is no legislation on compulsory vaccination, for me every doctor has an obligation to be vaccinated, there is no different case. The doctor is obliged to vaccinate. We will see how far the vaccinations will go, and if someone continues to stay out we will discuss it “.
“I do not agree with anyone being fired from a company because they have not been vaccinated. I think we need to convince people to get vaccinated. Let's go to October when the weather will be bad and we will have a coronavirus outbreak, if 80-85% of the population is not vaccinated by September to reach the necessary level of immunity. When we get to this point and the percentage of people who need to get to the wall of immunity has not been vaccinated, and the interiors of the shops are open, those who will enter the interiors will only be vaccinated, and that makes sense. The spaces will be small, they will need distances, if they enter there unvaccinated the transmission will be very large. The vaccinated person is not completely covered. “10% of those vaccinated if they get sick may not go to the ICU, but they will have symptoms”, continued Ms. Pagoni.
“The virus will be here. If we do not have high rates of vaccination, from October the weather will favor the transmission of the virus, and we will go on adventures. I do not even want to mention the fourth wave. We are not going to make it if something like this happens in the hospitals “, clarified Ms. Pagoni.
Petsas: The issue of mandatory vaccination should not be taboo
“The whole debate over the necessity of vaccination should not be taboo. “It must include more and more cases,” Deputy Interior Minister Stelios Petsas told SKAI when asked if vaccination should become mandatory for teachers as well, and not only for health professionals and workers in nursing homes.
He added that this presupposes that vaccines are available to all citizens. “The discussion about facilities and incentives for those who are vaccinated is to speed up the vaccination program, since we also have a stock of vaccines. “If someone works in a contact area, they can move to another location,” he said.
According to Mr. Petsas, there is still a lot of time to move so as to avoid a fourth wave of the pandemic.
The planning so far includes a much larger release of activities from July 1 to return to normalcy, said Stelios Petsas. We are slowly leaving the restrictions, it will be clarified in the meantime what will apply from July 1 clarified.
“We want the islanders to be universally vaccinated by the end of June,” the minister said.
In essence, vaccination cannot be mandatory
For their part, professors and lawyers emphasize that, in essence, vaccination cannot be mandatory.
The professor of Constitutional Law, Costas Chrysogonos, spoke on this issue.
The professor stressed that the police officer can arrest you and take you to the hospital and give you the vaccine, nor (note: it can become mandatory) in the sense of imposing criminal sanctions on anyone who does not get the vaccine “.
He concluded: “Anyone who refuses the vaccine can be put on professional leave, until the pandemic is addressed and if he comes in contact with a lot of people, we can not say that it applies to a night watchman who is alone.”
Too early to talk about a wall of immunity
For their part, however, experts do not hide their concern about the course of vaccinations, as they say with these numbers we can not even dream of a wall of immunity in the summer.
The researcher at the US National Cancer Institute, George Pavlakis, spoke to SKAI about the formation of the required immune wall after about three months, from September.
In particular, the researcher asked for the voluntary vaccination of children from 12 years of age and over if there is an adequacy of vaccines. “It is becoming more and more probable that the new executives are infecting the children more easily, I would like to exorcise it, but it seems that it is affecting younger and younger children unfortunately,” he said characteristically.
Regarding the wall of immunity, he commented that “it is too early to talk about protection at the population level, simply because we do not even have the numbers that will allow us to dream about it. We need more than 80% vaccinations, said the WHO, complete, for the entire population. Vaccination rates are very good in Greece, but we still want about 3 months. “By the end of September, we will be talking about a wall of immunity.”
If Greece goes to 150,000 vaccinations a day, Mr. Pavlakis explained, he will become the world champion. China reportedly makes 20 million vaccinations a day, so we are talking about Greece in proportion to 150,000 vaccinations.
