AMMAN —
Publishing the number of cases infected with the
COVID-19 virus on daily basis
is arousing fear among citizens, many of whom resort to conducting PCR tests
regularly, without even having symptoms, more and more voices are saying,
asking the government to stop this daily practice.
اضافة اعلان
The conditions are
different now, in view of the speed at which the Omicron mutant spreads, which
is the reason Jordan registers a significant number of cases every day, and of
the fact that few of those infected with the variant need to be hospitalized,
these voices stress.
The head of the
Health Committee at the
National Center for Human Rights, Ibrahim Al-Bdour,
said that publishing the number of COVID-19 cases on daily basis is useless,
suggesting that, instead, the government announce the number of cases on weekly
basis.
Bdour told
Jordan
News that the number of daily cases of COVID-19 infections are of concern
to the
Ministry of Health, but should not concern citizens in general.
“The Ministry of
Health should have knowledge about the exact number of daily cases in order to
know what to do and be able to monitor the epidemiological situation in the
country, to ensure that it is still under control, but making the number of
cases public every day only raises fear and anxiety among citizens,” he said.
Bdour added that
that the government should limit
PCR examinations to those who have COVID-19
symptoms only, “especially that the examinations are costly both for the state
treasury and for the citizens”, adding that when the number of examinations
increases, it is only logical that the number of cases increases.
Bdour also said
that the majority of those infected do not have symptoms and do not need to be
hospitalized.
“Now we are
coexisting with
Omicron, which is known to spread quickly but does not usually
cause severe symptoms,” he said adding that “we should know how to deal with
the pandemic, especially that it has been almost two years since we registered
the first case of COVID-19 virus in Jordan.”
Member of the
National Committee for Epidemiology Najwa Khoury told
Jordan News that
the main objective of publishing the daily cases of COVID-19 cases is to keep
citizens informed about the epidemiological situation and the extent to which
it affects the country.
She said that
“citizens are getting more afraid of the virus, and the significant number of
cases is surely affecting their lives and businesses, which is something that
we do not want”.
Khoury also said
that it might be preferable to publish the number of cases once a week only.
“Now, we have to concentrate on raising awareness among citizens regarding the
importance of taking the three doses of vaccine to improve immunity”, as well
as on ensuring that they adhere to the required health protocol, including
wearing masks.
More concretely,
announcing the number of cases on daily basis is affecting the tourism sector
significantly, industry people say.
President of the
Jordan Hotel Association Abdel Hakim Al-Hindi told
Jordan News that most
of the hotel reservations for the month of February were cancelled due to the
fact that Jordan was classified as a red country.
He added that the
government should only announce the number of cases that needed to be
hospitalized, to avoid having Jordan classified as a red country, since “the
majority of cases do not need to be hospitalized, and suffer from mild
symptoms.”
“Why, then, would
we announce the daily number of cases and ignite fear among Jordanians and
tourists,” he asked.
Hindi stressed
that the tourism sector has been going through hard times since the onset of
the pandemic and that the government needs to find real solutions to help
revive the sector.
A source at the
Ministry of Health who spoke to
Jordan News on condition of anonymity
said that “it is the citizens’ rights to keep updated about the number of cases
each day. I believe that if we do not publish the numbers, they will ask us to
do so”.
He also said that
stopping publishing the number of daily infections is not happening at the time
being, and that “publishing the number of cases underscores Jordan’s ability to
deal with the pandemic”.
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