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| Six cats hoping for handouts and settling for shade |
Last day of the four day holiday. Supermarket and pizza place have remained open. Pharmacies, interestingly, subject to government hours and limited to the duty pharmacy in each area. Have had no real need to go far and the heat is significant deterrent in business hours anyway.
Watching the masks beginning to disappear as people, not entirely logically, start to assume there is no problem here. After many weeks of no new cases did people assume magical immunity? Standing outside our building waiting for J (and photographing the ever hopeful cats) and see a man about to enter the building come up to one who has just exited it. No masks, although admittedly they are outside. But the Anglo in me - and, oddly this is cultural - thinks that they should not leave unnecessary regs on the books but actually enforce the ones that matter. There is no need for people outside and not close to anyone else to be wearing masks, and leaving the requirement to wear them outside your own home regardless just makes people think the regulations are pointless. On the other hand it is unfair and ineffective to leave enforcement in shops down to staff, many of whom are young or easily intimidated. Shops should be able to say that they’re sorry but they would lose their operating licence if they allowed it the same way pubs are unapologetic about legal requirements. But back to the two neighbours outside our apartment building. Forget the masks. Totally unnecessarily, acting out of long habit, the men shake hands.
It was inevitable that once flights were allowed in there would be cases, and the rules are still pretty strict. A test before leaving country of origin - think it’s in the area of 72 hours before, but specifics have changed and not on the list of things I need to know. Then another test on arrival at the airport and bus to quarantine hotel, where passport returned. Think that you’re now released from quarantine after seven days assuming both tests negative.
Has worked pretty well despite a couple of well publicised slips. But assumptions that there could be no community transmission in the near future are ill founded. North Cyprus is in as good shape as it is - currently 28 cases but a good handle on where they came from and how they’re being treated - because of early severe lockdown and extremely good contact tracing. Only have to look at Melbourne, Australia, which has just called out the army to enforce a new and seriously escalated lockdown, to see what happens when the virus has not been eradicated but a significant number of people have decided no more problem.