Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will address the nation early Thursday evening in order to explain the pandemic situation in the country and announce additional, nationwide measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus that seems to have been out of control.
Next to the new measures, in his address to the nation scheduled at 7:00 p.m., the Prime Minister is expected also to stress the need of “personal responsibility.”
At the meeting with the President of the Hellenic Republic Katerina Sakellaropoulou, Mitsotakis said that the country faces a second wave of the pandemic. “We still do better than the rest of Europe, however, this is not consolation.”
Health experts decided the national measures were necessary after infection cases almost doubled spiked in the last couple of days with the highest negative record on Wednesday with 865 new cases. Leaks to the press speak of another “shocking” number of daily cases expected to be publish later on Thursday. The spike set the health system under pressure.
According to media information, the scenarios speak of mandatory use of masks in- but also outdoors and night curfew. The government is determined to avoid a second lockdown as the economic burden will be huge.
During a briefing on Thursday, government spokesman Stelios Petsas underlined that there has been a worrying increase of infections in specific areas in the last days.
He stressed the significant decrease of the age of the infected. “Nationwide, the average age is 37, while in Thessaloniki ti is 28. This confirms that the basic reason for the case increase is the complacency and crowding.”
he added that the current picture is similar to the one in July and August, where younger generations returned to normalcy before the coronavirus, he said.
He said that infections increase is “either due to measures fatigue or relaxation and stressed that especially young generations are getting infected, are mostly without symptoms, and transmit the virus to their families and social environment without knowing it. We have said that this enemy is invisible.”
He said that there will be extensive controls to those violating the restrictions, especially in the catering service and those violating them will be punished exemplary.
On Wednesday, the Civil Protection placed the regional unit of Kastoria, north-western Greece, in lockdown and upgraded the risk category to Thessaloniki, Viotia, Larissa, Serres and Ioannina.
With 5 million residents, Attica records the majority of new cases each and every day, however, the cases do not seem to fulfill the criteria “per 100,000 residents”, the quick pace of contamination and the shortage of hospitals availability that would make the upgrade necessary.
More information on coronavirus in Greece here.
He said that infections increase is “either due to measures fatigue or relaxation and stressed that especially young generations are getting infected, are mostly without symptoms, and transmit the virus to their families and social environment without knowing it. We have said that this enemy is invisible.”
So why the children in Kozani and elswhere still have to go to school? The Virus dont care whether it is a party at the university or a gathering at school. You cant fine the virus, you cant put it to jail… its just there
… invisible though dangerous for everybody, visible becomes something else…
Please Mr. PM dont listen to your germen colleagues… they have opend the school but thousands of german teatcher proofed… schools are not save … despite all that saying