For the Icelandic Minister of Health, the way out of the epidemic lies in “generalized resistance” to the virus, which can be achieved through the infection of “the greatest possible number of people”.
Iceland will join the list of countries that have lifted all of their restrictions against Covid-19 overnight from Thursday to Friday, despite a still large number of cases, the government announced on Wednesday.
This decision, in line with the timetable for the gradual lifting of measures against the virus set by the executive and which will come into force on Friday at midnight, concerns both internal measures and border controls.
“We are returning to normal life but the virus is still with us,” Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir said after a government meeting in Reykjavik.
The leader did not rule out having to impose new measures if the situation required it – for example with the appearance of a new variant.
Achieving “widespread societal resistance to Covid-19”
To explain the lifting of restrictions, the Icelandic Minister of Health assured in a statement on Wednesday that “the generalized resistance of society to Covid-19 is the main route out of the epidemic”.
And to achieve this “widespread resistance”, “it is necessary that as many people as possible are infected with the virus, because vaccines are not enough, even if they offer good protection against serious diseases”, a- he added.
Iceland expects to achieve collective immunity covering around 80% of the population by the second half of March, its chief epidemiologist said in a statement.
In the past 24 hours, the country of 370,000 people has recorded 2,885 additional cases, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to more than 115,000. The country had already lifted its internal restrictions twice in the past, at the beginning of summer 2020 and then in summer 2021, but the lifting at the borders is a first.
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