The first confirmed coronavirus case of a foreign tourist vising the island of Crete has been identified on Saturday. It needed the help of local police to locate the patient. Health authorities are on alert.
The identification of the first positive coronavirus case has been detected on Crete, just a few days after regional airports re-opened on July 1, 2020.
The case refers to a woman form Romania who is on vacation together with her husband.
Health authorities and the Civil Protection went on alert in order to locate the woman and notify her on the test results, reports local media neakriti.
It needed the help of local police to locate the woman who is in one of the hotels in the Hersonissos Municipality.
According to the Greek Civil Protection authority, 825 tests are carried out daily on passengers who arrive at the Nikos Kazantzakis airport of Heraklio.
Travellers tested positive are placed in 14-day isolation in quarantine hotels, if the do not need medical help. In other cases are transferred to public hospitals.
A couple of Greek-Americans, aged 74 and 62, remain hospitalized in the Covid-19 Ward of the public hospital in Heraklio. The couple visited the island of Karpathos, when the husband fell ill.
Tracking his contacts, authorities detected two more infections in addition to the patient’s wife, Mega TV reported on Friday.
Meanwhile in Attica, the first infection has been confirmed in popular seaside resort Rafina in the south-east of Athens. The middle-aged patient is a local resident who first visited the Health Center.The patient has been transferred to a designated hospital in Athens, the Center has been disinfected.
The Mayor of Rafina made an announcement on Saturday morning urging locals and visitors to comply with coronavirus protection measures and to limit their social contacts in the next days, until health authorities have tracked the patients’ contacts.
Rafina is a very popular resort attacking many visitors over the weekends in summer.
Meanwhile the 190 Swedish tourists who arrived on the island of Rhodes with a special TUI charter on Thursday, count the hours until their 48-hour self-isolation ends. State-broadcaster ERT TV reported Saturday noon that some of them are in a special -probably quarantine – hotel, whole others are in the hotels they have booked.
According to latest ERT TV, all COVID-19 tests conducted on international flight passengers on Rhodes and Kos on July 1 are “negative.” 500 tests were carried out among a total of 1,600 passengers in Rhodes, and 300 tests in Kos.
Tests are carried out based on information international passengers have filled up in the “Passengers Location Form.“
As a tourist professional working only with incoming in Greece, i strongly recommend anyone to travel to the country this year. Unfortunately this silly random test can destroy a vacation and is capable of creating only troubles and complications. Think about this woman in Crete, probably healthy and asymptomatic, quarantined in a room like a prison.. meanwhile no tests are required to enter ant other europea country. Very bad choice by greek authorities.
Tourism professionals are interested only in the profitability of their business. They are not interested in the health of the country’s population, nor are they responsible for it. The fact that badly managed countries wrt Covid-19 [like Spain and Italy] are allowing tourists in and pretending that there are no public health implications is very poor judgement on their part. Greece is actually tolerating far too much, and the control over deviant tourists like Old Johnson is apparently zero.
The only bad choice made by Greek authorities is not clamping down on those who break the rules and think it’s fine to do so.
So greece should just let anyone with the virus enter and then spread it to whoever they meet? Just because shes asymptomatic doesnt mean she cant pass it on to others! It is even mkre dangerous as asymptomatic people wont even know that they are carrying the virus without a test!!!!
As a tourist professional, this time, i’m not interested in the profitability of my business: as i said, i suggest my customers NOT to take holidays in Greece this year even of they can: so i’m loosing time and money in the process.
Italy is doing great in containing the pandemic right now, so does Spain. Numbers speak by itself: Italy opened its borders to everyone in Europe with no controls on 3rd June and people hospitalized and in ICU sharply continued to decrease even afterwards, with no signs of catching up again. Right now there’s only 70 intubated in the whole nation and the last one entered the intensive care in mid April. And of course many asymptomatics came in between, and nothing happened.
Joanne, there’s plenty of evidence that just the asymptomatics are not able to spread the virus as newspapers are telling us. Probably your loan is guaranteed, so you can care only about health, but to destroy a nation’s economy by closing businesses is not a good way to preserve the wealth of a country either.
Andrea in your first post you advise travel tourists to travel to Greece this year., then in your second post you say….you strongly advise tourists NOT to visit this year.Andrea
Which is the typing error?
The first one is the wrong one, sorry. For all the love i feel for Greece, respect for my customers comes definetely first. Reality is that until those random tests are compulsory even for a small minoririty of travellers, it’s far too risky to choose Greece for vacationing this summer. Note that i’m not working with other countries so it all goes against my interests, and my website has circa 6millions visitors per year, so no small numbers.
And what about all passengers from plane, who travelled toghether with that romanian couple saturnday morning ? I suppose is a Charter Aegean Bucharest-Heraklion.
All passengers have been exposed, a test for all passengees strongly requaerd !
Reading the woman is from Romania is a big surprise. The numbers there are rising since weeks again and are still very high: more than 400 new cases and 20 deths per day.
They are doing much worse than the Uk which was blocked at least july 15th.Ate
What happens to the rest of passengers when someone on that flight is “positive”?
Thats why the masks on the aeroplane
Interesting opinion ping-pong…. Greece so far managed Covid-19 better then many others, what surprised me a lot ! I credit this to the current Greek government which first time in the last 40 or even more years seem to be responsible and having a plan, besides personal interest….
Bit current complexity, tracking country of original departure etc. carries a certain danger to be pushed back substantially…. I cross fingers that we can keep the country balanced, not getting overrun by a Tourism which is behaving irresponsible and selfish, no matter where they come from….
Johnson sen. is the best role model for that kind of….