"The situation is not extraordinary but catastrophic"

"The situation is not extraordinary but catastrophic"

He added that the coronavirus does not recognize "Serbs doing things out of spite".

According to him, the situation in the country must be urgently resolved with the most rigorous measures and a large coverage of vaccination in the shortest possible time.

"I believe that next week we will be in a position to assess that this measure gave some results at the beginning, because we saw it at vaccination points, but it is still far from what we want to achieve," he said.

Tiodorović believes that we must introduce very restrictive measures for 10 days, which will apply to everything except food supply facilities, pharmacies and gas stations, and everything else must be restrictive. He noticed that young people gather because they want to keep the night life and provide themselves with a peaceful stay, but it is not peaceful to be in a big crowd in the late hours and that there are a lot of full night clubs and restaurants that communal inspectors cannot control.

Tiodorovic singled out cultural events such as theaters to adhere to the prescribed measures of physical distance and wearing masks, but that this is not the case in shopping malls and public transport.

"We need greater and stricter control with punishment, which is very rigorous, so that in 10 days, even though those 10 days are not enough, we can achieve certain progress and create a controlled situation," he said. From early July, we are proposing COVID-19 passes for all people, which will be valid for 24 hours, and that is no discrimination and no threat to human rights if other conditions, testing, antigen tests are respected, said Tiodorović.

"I would still appeal to our citizens to be vaccinated if we want to live like in Italy, Denmark, Norway, Portugal. When we ask the citizens, they will not be vaccinated, they will not test, when we ask them what they want, they say we don't have a clue. It looks like our Serbian stubbornness, but the virus doesn't recognize stubbornness or doing things out of spite", Tiodorovic explained. Pediatricians who have insight into the total incidence of children under the age of 18 have reported a terrible increase in cases, which can be compared to two percent in previous waves, which is now between 10 and 15 percent, he said.

Tiodorović explained that children are not tested enough and that according to all world studies, children from 1st to 4th grade are the least endangered, but that children from 5th to 8th grade should be put in the same relationship with high school students.

As for the faculty, Tiodorović praised the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, which provided its students that if they want to attend practical classes, and every future doctor should work with patients, they must be vaccinated.

The Faculty of Law in Belgrade should also be praised, he added, which organized a round table where young people could get information and resolve dilemmas about vaccination.

"Let's be objective, young people do not watch the news, they are interested in social networks, we must provide access to young people there to inquire and educate about vaccination," said the epidemiologist.

I have always asked that we have experts in sociology and communicology in the Crisis Staff in order to show that we do not leave social networks to anti-vaxxers, he explained. Tiodorovic said that he would not agree with his colleagues who say that we have reached the peak of the infection, because only those who have symptoms are tested, and that he would multiply those numbers by two, because we have many more positives than is known.

"We missed the scenario to achieve vaccination of about 70 percent, we were the first in Europe at the beginning of vaccination, and now we are among the last. Is it possible for people to believe so much in something without arguments against vaccination," he said.

He added that "the second scenario, which is already underway, is a natural process, so that we can all become infected."

"How much will the natural process cost us? We should not allow that, we should get serious, this is one of the turning points in history for us," Tiodorović emphasized.

He appealed to the people to unite because there is no substitute for the vaccine, so that many more lives would be saved, and that politics would end up where it belongs and that this situation with the virus would not be used for political purposes.