During a video meeting with the Public Council, Minister of Health of Armenia Arsen Torosyan stated that he doesn’t support the application of sanctions at all and believes the radical solution to this problem is educational reforms, adding that children need to know how to wash their hands correctly and learn about bacteria starting from kindergarten.

“Later, in school, children might learn about viruses, the difference between viruses and bacteria and more, and whenever there is an epidemic, they won’t think a virus is made up and doesn’t exist because they will have learned about them in their biology classes in the seventh grade,” he said.

Touching upon the application of sanctions, the minister emphasized the following: “When there was a chickenpox outbreak in Italy, the government decided that children who hadn’t been vaccinated couldn’t go to school. I have never said the Gardasil vaccine should be mandatory since this vaccine isn’t considered a vaccine against an epidemic. I agree that there shouldn’t be sanctions in regard to this.”