– Failure to test oneself if one has symptoms, in order to be able to go to the Christmas table, is highly irresponsible – and it is putting both one’s own and others’ health in danger.
It writes professional director Frode Forland at the National Institute of Public Health in an e-mail to Dagbladet.
– We have not gone out with special Christmas table advice at the national level. At the municipal or regional level, there may be such, where there is a lot of infection and / or pressure on the health services, he continues.
FHI’s most important piece of advice, the subject director emphasizes, is that people receive the vaccines and stay at home if they have “the slightest hint of symptoms of a respiratory infection”.
– If you may have been in a potential infection situation, you may want to get tested before you go. The same should be done if you have a fever or symptoms from the ear-nose-throat region. This also applies to those who have been vaccinated.
– The fourth dose may come in March
Yes, from the government
Tuesday morning Minister of Health and Care Services Ingvild Kjerkol (Labor Party) responded to criticism from several professionals, as in an article in Dagbladet Among other things, he accused the government of “allowing freedom of packed Christmas dinners to outweigh measures to protect against serious covid-19 disease”.
Kjerkol replied to Dagbladet that the plot “falls on its own unreasonableness”.
– As the situation is now, we believe it is possible to carry out Christmas dinners, but it is important to assess the situation locally. It is also very important that everyone follows the infection control advice that applies, and that those who have symptoms stay at home, she said.
After Tuesday’s press conference on the corona situation, she also revealed that she herself has planned a Christmas table.
– I will go to the Christmas table, and it will happen safely and in line with infection control advice, she told Dagbladet.
Christmas table outburst
Was at a Christmas party in a solar energy company
On Wednesday, it was announced that around 40 people will be infected with corona after a Christmas dinner in the company Scatec at the end of last week.
The district superintendent, the chief infection control officer in Oslo and FHI believe that this is probably the new omikron variant, as one of the participants at the Christmas table had recently been to South Africa.
Both the person who had been to South Africa and the company must have followed all infection control rules, and in addition to corona testing everyone before the relevant Christmas table. Everyone tested negative before the party, and only the vaccinated had access.
CLEAR SPEECH: – Failure to test yourself if you have symptoms, to be able to go to the Christmas table, is highly irresponsible – and it is to endanger both your own and others’ health, writes director Frode Forland in FHI. Photo: Bjørn Langsem / Dagbladet
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More cancellations
At the end of November it became clear that Rema 1000 as a general rule postpones Christmas table celebrations. They did this to ensure that the stores could be kept “open, infection-free and full of goods”, Reiten Retail’s head of communications, Øyvind Breivik, told Dagbladet.
The same is true among other Sports department in NRK.
– We are vulnerable to staffing and have many productions ahead of us. Then we reduce the risk where possible, Sundvor writes in a message, wrote NRK sports editor Egil Sundvor in a message to Dagbladet on Monday.
On Tuesday, Dagbladet’s financial website Børsen reported that several popular Oslo restaurants have experienced Christmas table cancellations lately.
Afraid of infection? How to save Christmas
Also The Norwegian Directorate of Health had to cancel its planned Christmas table.
– We had planned a large Christmas table for all our employees. We have chosen to postpone this. Not primarily because of the corona situation, but because we have a lot of other types of infection, also among our employees, with high sickness absence, said health director Bjørn Guldvog to Dagbladet after Tuesday’s press conference, and elaborated:
– We are an emergency preparedness organization that must plan for us all to be healthy towards Christmas – and thus be able to take a hit, given that we should get into a more difficult situation.
Follows from hour to hour
– No major risk
However, it did not stop all the Christmas joy for the health director.
– But I have been to the Christmas table, and think it has been very nice. So I hope others can also enjoy it, said Guldvog, and added that the Christmas table was held with friends.
Assistant health director Espen Rostrup Nakstad also had a clear Christmas table advice when he spoke to Dagbladet last Saturday:
– If you are sick – if you wake up with a fever, headache or sore throat, or notice that you are starting to get respiratory symptoms – then this is not the day you should go to a Christmas table. Then you should stay at home, said Nakstad, and continued:
– If people are good at it, a Christmas table does not carry a particularly greater risk of infection than meeting the same colleagues at work, where you may sit with them for many hours every day.
The stable tip was therefore to be at home if you are ill, take the vaccine, and follow the ordinary infection control advice, according to Nakstad.
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