Greece’s Civil Protection placed the island of Kalymnos under tough lockdown late on Tuesday due to an outbreak of coronavirus infections. The lockdown is in force from today, Wednesday, until Monday, May 10, 2021, “for urgent reasons of serious risk to public health” and to limit the spread of the virus.
Health authorities announced on Tuesday that 49 new infection cases were confirmed on the island in the past 24 hours and another 31 on Easter Sunday and Monday.
Under the tough lockdown measures, residents will only be allowed to leave their homes for workplaces that remain open, to visit the doctor or pharmacy, to walk their pets or for supermarket shopping until 6 p.m, the Civil Protection said in a statement.
Other restrictions include the suspension of construction work and religious ceremonies, excluding funerals with up to nine people. Residents are only permitted to leave the island for health reasons.
Speaking to state broadcaster ERT, the mayor of the island Dimistris Diakomichalis blamed the local church, the residents and the state mechanism for the rise of the infections.
“People have been crowding in the churches, haven’t observed the protection measures and the authorities did not to checks,” the mayor said.
He appealed to Health Minister to proceed to horizontal vaccination of the islanders and “send Pfizer vaccines that the locals have embarrassed.”
He did not elaborate on the vaccination rate of the locals and whether a large part has refused to get inoculation because of the short of vaccine.
Based on the Greek
vaccination tracker of the health authorities, some 9,000 residents of the Regional Unit of Kalymnos (6 islands in total) have been vaccinated. Of them 5,980 have received the first dose and 3,000 both doses. The unit has 29,500 residents, Kalymnos alone 16,000. In this sense, the vaccination rate on the island is rather low.
Kalymnos was again in tougher lockdown end December 2020 and for quite some time, until the situation was under control.
