Kikilias: Hospitals across the country need to return to normality

Hospitals across the country need to return to normality, Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said on Wednesday on Skai TV, explaining that "from Monday onwards, we will return to 50 pct of the average surgeries done in 2019, both in the private sector and in the national health system hospitals."

Regarding the patients who were already waiting to be operated on, he explained that "they will be categorised and priority will be given to those who have chronic ailments and are waiting to be operated on, but priority will be based on medical criteria. And this is how we will proceed from now on. There are some surgeries that have accumulated, there are some others that are going to follow."

As for face masks, he stressed that "we check with both the ECDC and the World Health Organisation on a daily basis. Whatever they review, whatever they upgrade, we come immediately and adapt it after it first passes before our Committee. Obviously, all the people were in their houses. Now people will be outside. Alongside the other measures, as Sotiris Tsiodras and our scientists have said, there is also the face mask. The mask protects us and it protects others. In closed, indoor spaces where there is crowding... it makes sense that they want it and it makes sense to impose it in such places. There is a strong recommendation by the Committee regarding open spaces and the way we should move about and I think that the mask alone is not a sufficient and necessary condition. It must be combined with hand washing and antiseptics, with safety rules and distances, avoidance of crowding, with the protection of vulnerable groups."