By Athena Karsera
AFTER claiming 56 lives in the last days, the heatwave yesterday finally began to subside.
Meteorologists say temperatures are expected to continue falling in the next few days. Yesterday’s high was 39 degrees Celsius, and temperatures are expected to drop to 37 degrees today and tomorrow.
Health Minister Christos Solomis yesterday assured the public that the chaotic situation at the island’s hospitals, caused by the high number of heat-related emergencies, was under control: “The situation has definitely improved”, he said. “We are at the end, we hope.”
His comments came as the Health Ministry reported that another eight people had died overnight, raising the death toll to 56 since last Friday.
Hospitals treated between 3,000 and 3,500 people in heat-related incidents last weekend.
According to Solomis, all except Limassol Hospital yesterday reported a fall in the number of heat-related emergencies. After a visit to Limassol General Hospital yesterday Solomis ordered the employment of temporary emergency staff. Additional fans and air-conditioning units have also been installed at the hospital.
And the minister explained that the overcrowding of Larnaca Hospital’s morgue was mostly due to the fact that only nine refrigeration chambers had been installed when the hospital was built, and that a backlog had built up as funerals are not held on Fridays and at weekends. The problem had been compounded by the failure of families to take possession of the corpses on time, mostly due to people waiting for relatives to arrive from overseas.
The high number of fatalities in Larnaca has been attributed to residents not being used to such high temperatures, and therefore not altering their behaviour accordingly. Solomis also said that high figures could be credited to the many refugee housing estates — occupied mostly by the elderly — in the area.
The Health Minister admitted that no exact figure could be given to the heat-related deaths, as most of the victims were elderly and most suffered chronic illness that had been aggravated by the heat.
He added that the true figure probably fell between 52 and 57. Most victims were not residents of retirement homes, as had first been thought, but people living on their own.
Solomis said that the lack of younger victims proved that a government campaign launched before and during the heatwave informing people of safety measures had been a success.
