زين يوسف
تصوير : محمود رؤوف
On the fourth day of the activities of the Iraq International Book Fair, a dialogue seminar entitled “Iraq in the face of the Corona variant” was held, in which Dr. Nazik Al-Hamoud, Director of Public Health at the Karkh Health Department, hosted the session, and the session was moderated by writer Hussein Rashid.
Al-Hmoud said that “the truth is when I saw people at the Iraq exhibition shopping for books, I was very happy, because the pioneers of the book in my imagination are very few, but today I saw the opposite, and this makes us enter the subject of this epidemic, these mutations that occur, are mainly related to health institutions and how these institutions deal with every mutation of this virus.”
He added that “the issue of vaccines is a very necessary and important issue, it is not the third dose that will prevent the virus, but the first and second dose, and we have strengthened the third dose to certain groups, for example workers in the health institution because these deal with the virus directly, in addition to the elderly from the age of 60 years and above, as well as those who have chronic diseases, as they are the main target for giving the vaccine, as well as those who provide the service, for example when you go to a café or restaurant, you have to To believe in yourself and this service is provided by a healthy person, and the decisions issued by the crisis cell and the Prime Ministry are clear, that this group has to take the dose, but there is a weakness in implementation, the health institution is unable to force people, but it provides the service.”
Regarding the readiness of the health institution for the new mutant, he indicated that “in the health institution, we have gone through more difficult stages than this mutant, and we have reached a stage where hospitals are full of infected people and deaths in hundreds, we resorted at the time to home isolation, whoever has a simple or medium condition is isolated at home and the health teams go to provide him with full service.”
Regarding the readiness of the Ministry of Health for the fourth phase of the Corona virus, Dr. Nazik stated that “the Ministry of Health is prepared and opened more outlets, and all the main preparations are available in all governorates, as for the issue of receiving the vaccine, for example in Karkh, we are required to give the vaccine to two million and 600 thousand people from the age of 12 years and above, so far we have reached the vaccination of one million people, and this is a very good number.
Dr. Nazik also spoke about infections, noting that “when infections decrease, this is not something reassuring and means that the virus has disappeared at all, but we have to wait because in many cases the infections decrease and a certain attack comes and the numbers return to increase, but we advise people to take advantage of this drop in numbers in order to be vaccinated, in order to be safe from any new wave of the virus.”
To talk about university students, Mada and schools, and whether there are numbers for vaccine recipients from them, Dr. Nazik explained, “In Karkh, we went to all universities, and we found that they are remarkably committed, and 90% of them received the vaccine, and we prevent those who come to take the swab from entering the university while refraining from vaccination, as for middle school students, the choice is theirs, noting that they have the consent of their parents to take the vaccine, and 11.560 people between the ages of 12 and 15 years were vaccinated. 10,453 are school students.”
On how to differentiate between infection with the Corona virus from seasonal flu, he stated, “Since we have this epidemic, when these symptoms appear, you have to put in front of your eyes that you are infected, and then you do a set of tests and analyzes, and there is a type of flu that is no less dangerous than the Corona virus, and we have lost many because of it, so dealing with the patient is no different in every disease, whether it is simple or dangerous.”
To resolve the controversy in the issue of which vaccine is the best, he stressed that “all vaccines are good, and the effect is very good, and we do not allow the Ministry of Health to enter any type that has a certain defect or little effectiveness, we dealt with three vaccines in order to increase the number of vaccinated, and for example, those who received the Sinaform vaccine can take the Pfizer vaccine after 6 months, meaning that those who received two doses of a particular vaccine can receive the third dose after 6 months from any Another vaccine”