"Even if 600 people died, that's a good result. If you're going to get sick, now's the time"

In an interview with Srpski Telegraf, Professor Doctor Branimir Nestorovic assessed that the virus is now "relatively weak," that there is a smaller percentage of patients with severe forms of the disease, that there are people resistant to coronavirus, which is why a smaller percentage of infected persons is needed in order to acquire collective immunity than had been believed - and that the antibodies test is not reliable.

"If you should get sick, it's best to get sick now, when the virus is relatively weak. There is now a much smaller percentage of severe patients. When you look at Worldmeters, you will see that there is only one percent of severe cases. In the beginning there were 81 percent. People were locked down and that was good because they got sick much less. But they did not acquire collective immunity. And now it has been announced that, fortunately, a high percentage of collective immunity is not needed, the English say that it is approximately 43 percent. Two papers were published last week and data shows that 60-70 percent of people are resistant to start with. These are young women, those who work with children, because in fact children have these other coronaviruses and that gives them protection. The Swiss did a large study and 60 percent of people had innate resistance.

And as for antibodies, it turned out that this test is not very reliable. Only those with a severe clinical picture can develop antibodies. Patients with mild symptoms have antibodies for a very short time, two to three weeks, then they are lost. So that test gives very low results," he said.

He also assessed that not everyone should be tested, and that testing does not prevent getting sick.

"Not everyone with symptoms should be tested. You are being tested today, you do not have a more severe clinical picture and the test is negative. In a few days the picture gets worse, you get pneumonia. So what does a negative test mean? Those who run a fever, feel unwell, who are coughing should get tested... It has always been like that. Now, everyone in Serbia would like to be tested. But the state will give some of the tests to private laboratories, so they will also start testing, and then everyone who wants to be tested will be tested - however, that is silly. People think if they are tested, that they have protected themselves and that they cannot get sick. It has been known for a month that children do not transmit this virus. Asymptomatic carriers, i.e. those who are not sick, but have a positive test, also transmit very little," he stated.

Regarding the allegedly falsified data on the number of coronavirus deaths, he said that a doctor responsible for a case is also responsible for official data, and that in his opinion, the assessment that this data is fake is not serious. He said that there are no sources for such allegations, and that a document should be shown.

"They launch these stories trivially, accusing someone of falsifying data. The data is entered into that table by doctors who treat patients, not by us. The person who treated the patient submits the data to Batut (institute of public health), Batut enters it into the table, for each patient their name, last name, diagnosis, date of admission, date of discharge are recorded," he said.

"Interestingly, the same kind of accusations are made America against Trump's doctors, exactly the same story, that some are reducing, others inflating (numbers) - that's the pattern. In the end, even if 600 people did die (in Serbia), that is a good result. Sweden has 6,000 deaths, the Netherlands 11,000, these are countries of our size. Even if there were 600, it is a recognition for the healthcare system. It's not to be looked down upon, it is twice as much, but even such data would be respectable. Macedonia has 200 deaths per two million inhabitants," Nestorovic said.

(Telegraf.rs)