COVID-19 Committee: Mandatory PCR test for illness certificate, vax at Christmas theme parks

The National Committee on COVID-19 has recommended that the government make a PCR mandatory for the issuance of a COVID illness certificate, and that it require compulsory vaccination of both employees and visitors at Christmas theme parks throughout the country.

“No one wants them [theme parks] to become the locus of a new surge [in the epidemic],” the president of the Panhellenic Medical Association,” Athanasios Exadaktylos, a member of the Committee, told MEGA television.

Exadaktylos noted that the employees at such theme parks are being hired now, ahead of Christmas.

Mandatory PCR test for illness certificate

The Committee is also recommending that the state require a COVID-19 PCR test in order to issue an illness certificate (that one has previously fallen ill from the virus), and not simply a rapid test, as was the case until now.

“It [the PCR test] is more trustworthy than a rapid test, which may yield a false positive or false negative result and can easily be violated [tampered with],” Exadaktylos said.

‘Reduce spread of virus with self-tests before the holidays’

“As regards the spread [of the virus], we are in a phase of stabilisation with the prospect of receding. We shall reduce the spread with two self-tests that vaccinated and unvaccinated people will take at Christmas and New Year’s,” he said.

Regarding how long the illness certificate or the vaccination certificate remains in effect, he said that, “There has been an initial discussion but we [the Committee] have not concluded.”

“With the advent of the Omicron variant the data is changing, and we may see changes to what applies now,” he said. “Within two or three weeks we shall have the answers.”