There are thousands of people who have the virus in Armenia who do not know that they are carriers. It is possible that there are also carriers in the government, but they do not know about it. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke about this during a session of government. He explained why the government said one thing at one point, but now is saying that wearing masks is mandatory. Pashinyan explained that it is due to the increase in the number of infected patients.
“Usually, we only are able to discover one portion of the overall cases; approximately half of them. Therefore, if there are 7,000 confirmed cases, there are 14,000 carriers. Ninety percent of those 14,000 people do not know that they are infected. This is why wearing masks needs to be de facto mandatory. If people do not take heed de facto, then we will need to make wearing masks mandatory de jure. So, we will make it mandatory for people to wear masks even if they are sitting alone in a park and there is no one near them for 10 kilometers. Anyone who is not wearing a mask would need to be fined.”
According to Pashinyan, if citizens do not uphold the rules set forth by the State of Emergency Command, they will be forced to make wearing masks everywhere mandatory. “We will make wearing masks mandatory everywhere without exception, even at home. This is, of course, an exaggeration, but we need to make a decision that would cause people to get fined if they leave the house without wearing a mask.”
Lusine Budaghyan
