Skopje is counting four dead and around thirty infected with West Nile virus, and the argument between the mayor and the opposition has boiled down to who sprayed when. SDSM claims Orce Gjorgjievski is „reading out a spraying calendar\". Gjorgjievski replies that public health is not protected with press conferences. Both are right about the other one - and that is precisely the problem.

What the numbers say

According to the figures presented, Skopje has 35 confirmed cases and four dead, with six people in serious condition requiring intensive care. That is not a seasonal nuisance - that is an epidemic with fatalities in the capital.

SDSM asks a question that holds up: „If there were seven larvae treatments and spraying from the air and the ground, and the epidemic is in the capital, then either the measures were late, or they were weak, or the hotspots were missed.\"

Aleksandar Davčevski, from the party's city organisation, judged that „instead of timely prevention, timely analysis and systematic control of mosquito breeding sites - the mayor is late again\".

The defence: we started earlier than everyone

Gjorgjievski answered with dates. In 2018 the first ground disinfestation began on 3 July, and the first aerial spraying on 7 and 8 July. This year the activities started on 7 May - almost two months earlier.

That is an answer to the question „did you work\", not to the question „did it work\". The mayor also recalled that locally transmitted West Nile cases exist in several European countries, including Greece, Serbia and Kosovo - which is true, but does not explain why the figure is highest precisely in Skopje.

„Public health is not protected with press conferences. It is not protected by creating fear. It is not protected with political sensations. It is protected with systematic work, continuous prevention, expert recommendations and timely field activities,\" the mayor said, accusing the opposition of using a health situation for political gain.

The calendar really is not proof

Here the opposition has a better point than a press conference deserves. A list of dates shows something was done. It does not show where it was done, whether it hit the actual breeding sites, or whether the effect was measured after treatment.

And that is the difference between disinfestation and a disinfestation calendar. The mosquito does not breed on the city's schedule - it breeds in standing water. If the hotspots are not mapped, seven treatments can be exactly as ineffective as one.

Four people are not an argument in a debate

This polemic will run until the local elections and both sides know it. But behind it stand four families and six people now fighting in intensive care.

What is missing from the whole exchange is not a sharper sentence. It is an independent analysis: where exactly the breeding sites were detected, which locations were treated, with what effectiveness, and what the monitoring of the mosquito population shows after each treatment. That data either exists or it does not. If it exists, it should be published. If it does not - then the accusation that the measures „missed\" is not a political thesis but an unavoidable conclusion.