His anxiety about his “Centaur” mutation coronaviruswhich could lead to a new outbreak of the pandemic in September, said Demosthenes Sarigiannis.

An AUTH environmental engineering professor mentioned that we are currently in a de-escalation phase. The de-escalation that we are seeing during this period, as the professor noted, is not associated with some measures, but with some kind of natural immunity in many local areas.

However, the Centaur sub-variant could turn the tide, bringing a new wave of up to 30,000 cases a day from autumn.

In particular, he noted for the next time period: “It will be a mixed period, with the beginning of September being relatively good, because, in essence, this will be the result of the de-escalation that we are seeing in August.”

“What worries me is that there is a Centaur sub-variant across the country that is more contagious than the other two Omicron variants, meaning that it will dominate if it enters the country,” said the ANT1 professor. “I think it is unlikely that he will not enter the country, since we had an increase in tourist flow in August,” he added.

As Mr. Sarigiannis noted, if the Centaur enters the country in August, this will cause a new wave, which will begin to develop from late September to mid-October. “Perhaps we will see rapid growth,” he said characteristically, stressing, however, that this will happen if the measures remain the same.

In fact, the AUTH professor calculated that at the end of August we will have about 10,000 cases, and in mid-September the drop will reach 6,000. And if the Centaur sub-variant dominates and we do not take action, then cases could reach 30,000 .

Capravelos: We are approaching 1,000 deaths a month

For his part, Nikos Kapravelos, director of the intensive care unit at Papanikolu Hospital, said we are close to reaching 1,000 deaths per month.

Speaking at the Open, he said: “We are experiencing the worst summer since the start of the pandemic, with hundreds of thousands of cases and thousands of deaths. We are approaching 1000 deaths per month. In the summer of 2020, there are few deaths and few sick people. The summer of 2021 also ended with a small number of deaths and illnesses. Unfortunately in 2022 due to extreme measures to relax and underestimate the virus. If we don’t see the reality of the 6th wave, we won’t be able to counter the 7th.”

At the same time, he noted that “in other European countries, compliance with the vaccination campaign is very high. With two doses, the effectiveness against coronavirus dropped to 50%, with the third – 85%, with the fourth – more than 95%. When countries provide such protection to their populations, they obviously relax the rest of the measures. But when we see that there is very little defense in Greece, because few people made the 4th game, then there is no need to compare other countries.”

Finally, highlighting that compliance in our country is very low, Mr. Capravelos said that the mandatory mask should be reinstated, at least indoors and where there are crowds, as it should not be canceled in the first place.