Mitsotakis: We will have vaccines by January - The next ten days are difficult

The debate in Parliament between the political leaders on the outbreak of the pandemic is in progress. The Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis opened the discussion, calling on SYRIZA not to target scientists and sending a message of hope for the vaccines, which, as he said, will come in January.

At the same time, he defended the decisions made with the opening of tourism and clarified that the second, horizontal lockdown was inevitable, as the exponential increase of cases could not be addressed with more relaxed measures.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis started with a brief review from March until today, in order, as he said, to restore the truth and not to hear dramatized rumors.

“I provoked today’s debate, so that we can have a sober, honest dialogue about the situation in the country. The government will inform the national delegation and the citizens and I expect all participants to respect the urgency of the situation”, he explained.

“I believe”, he continued, “that the last thing our doctors, nurses and fellow citizens would like to hear is another pointless quarrel. It is up to us all to stand up to the circumstances and turn the process into a fruitful dialogue. The government will say what it has done, what it is going to do and will make honest self-criticism. And the opposition will participate with proposals”.

“The coming days will be critical days and the political leadership, the parties and the citizens must take responsibility. What has been mediated since March until today is known, but let’s look at an overview, to see what the problems are and not to follow non-existent rumors and dramatized situations that aim at political benefits”, he underlined.

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“In an honest discussion at the October EU Summit, I said that there is a bet, which I do not know if we will win: do we have the ability to limit the outbreak of the second wave with more relaxed measures? Unfortunately, we know the answer today. We can not do that. I’m sorry to say that, but no country has succeeded. We all tried to take targeted measures, but unfortunately we did not manage to stop the pandemic and the exponential growth. We were forced to take the drastic measure of horizontal lockdown when we saw an exponential increase in the cases. I did not hesitate to do so, a few days after the launch of the previous set of measures, as the information provided to me by the experts could not be interpreted differently.

Today we do not walk without direction. We do not know when we will reach the top, but we see it and that is the vaccine. We have to grit our teeth to get to the end. We will have vaccines by January. They will come in parts and the citizens will need to be vaccinated in order to break the chain of the pandemic. Responsibility is not blame. We call on everyone to consider that responsibility is the twin brother of freedom. I am sure that this notion of responsibility, not guilt, will be embraced by society and maybe now that we are facing the most difficult dark days, we will overcome the difficulties and come out victorious with as few injuries as possible, so that in 2021 will be a year of restart”, the Prime Minister concluded.

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