The scientific advisory team was unanimous in its proposal for regulating the movement of citizens through the SMS authorisation system. According to press reports, the team advised the government on Monday to keep this grossly illiberal measure in place for the whole of February, maintaining the number of authorisations for leaving the house to two per day.

Members of the team argued that the three hours of free movement granted per SMS to citizens were more than enough to cover all their needs! This a preposterous argument, betraying the arrogance of the members of the team. Apart from epidemiology, virology and viral loads and infection rates have they now developed expertise on how many hours a citizen requires to be out of his or her house?

Are our fundamental rights as citizens now going to be dictated by a team of scientists that are constantly finding new reasons to justify the scare mongering? At Monday’s presidential palace meeting the president and ministers were told the situation was still critical, and that the de-escalation of measures should take place at a very slow pace.

The figures do not seem to back this alarmism. The number of cases has fallen consistently to below 200 per day, the positivity rate of tests fell below one per cent on Monday and the number of people in hospital was 164. In short, things have improved significantly in the last few weeks even though Okypy insists on telling us that the situation in hospitals is critical. Why is it critical, considering there is now a bed capacity of about 230?

The numbers certainly do not justify keeping the SMS system, imposed by states like Greece and Cyprus where citizens have accepted this big infringement on their personal liberty without protest. In Cyprus people seem content finding ways of getting round the SMS practice. The number of people in Troodos square supposedly to go for a nature walk last weekend was unprecedented but perfectly understandable – they were entitled to go for physical exercise on a nature trail, even if the trail was 100km from their home.

If the council of ministers today decides to heed the advice of the scientific team and keep the two SMS per day in February as well there will not just be abuses of the system there could also be mass violations because it would be perfectly reasonable for people to say ‘enough is enough.’ The government must understand that it cannot abuse the rule by decree to carry on violating our personal liberty without sparking a reaction. It can keep its restrictions in place, but it must scrap the SMS system from February 1.