Kon explains why measures take effect on Tuesday: Mistakes, and infections happened at the funeral

Photo: Tanjug/Dragan Kujundzic

Today, epidemiologist Predrag Kon spoke for RTS about the current epidemiological situation regarding coronavirus in Serbia, as well as the new measures that should come into force tomorrow.

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He also spoke about the funeral of Patriarch Irinej.

"We know that the ban on gathering of more than 5 people is in force and it is clear that it was impossible to ban people from bidding their farewell to His Holiness, nor did it occur to anyone. But we demanded that the measures be respected. I saw that many, especially top state officials, wore masks, that it was very much present, that it was taken into account, but that there were mistakes, there is no doubt that there have been. It's quite certain that there were also infections, but we will see that in a week," he said.

Kon also said that Tuesday was chosen as the first day to implement new measures for organizational reasons, but also that the Crisis HQ proposed more rigorous measures than those adopted.

That the situation is not so dark is also seen in the latest information presented by Kon.

"The slowdown of the virus can be seen, especially in Belgrade," said Kon.

The effect of the measures adopted last Tuesday will now be seen, says Kon, while the measures that will take effect tomorrow, will show results in a week.

The presence of the virus is high, he added. The number of new infections can be multiplied by ten, says Kon.

"If we find 6,000, that's certainly 60,000," Kon said.

Few infections in schools, but much work for epidemiologists

"Infection mostly happens outside of schools. We know that by questioning, for each of those students individually, we talk to the parents, we get information about where the student was, whether they could have been in contact with someone, whether they took off their mask and so on. Then you find out either that someone is sick in the house or that they were at some gathering where someone was sick. In one week, there were 354 such pieces of information in Belgrade. That is why we can claim that schools are safe places for students. As for teachers, they also get infected outside of school, but infection also happens in schools. There were eight clusters in one week, these are proven transfers in schools, while in the entire previous period there had been four. These are small numbers for Belgrade," Kon explained.

However, he added that it is rational to consider online classes, because the virus is more and more present and there will be more and more such cases.

(Telegraf.rs)