The pandemic brought the celebrated 'world on the move' to a standstill. The fear and panic generated new global and localized states of hygienic emergency against 'miasmic deviants' and unleashed logics of control, containment and exclusion that undermine the culture of collective and individual rights. As the various waves of the pandemic unfold with the mutations of the virus, we witness accentuated processes of exclusion, racialization, marginalization and expulsion of those deemed different, 'deviant', 'dangerous' and 'uncontrollable', not only in Cyprus but in different parts of the globe.