Greece’s health authorities announced on Friday 791 new coronavirus cases and 11 Covid-related deaths in the last 24 hours. The number of intubated Covid-patients in hospitals Intensive Care Units stands at 375.
Live Briefing
At the Live Briefing on Friday, health experts said that the pandemic indicators are improving, however, they are still high in some areas.
Professor for Child Epidemiology Vana Papaevangelou stressed that the coronavirus pandemic is in clear downward trend.
She underlined that there are seven regions where the epidemiological load remains high.
Regions with high load: Attica, Magnisia, Larissa, Florina
Regions with increased load: Kos, Naxos, Corfu
There are currently 9,500 active cases are in the country.
Positivity rate remains low and is at 2.3% in the average.
Vaccinations
Stand June 11, 2021:
4,160,324 vaccinated citizens (39.9%) 6,665,626 doses
1,500,064 Partially vaccinated
2,660,260 Fully vaccinated (25.5%)
Vaccinations tracker per region here.
Official coronavirus data, June 11
Tests in the last 24 hours: PCR 13,650 Rapid tests 28,453
Positivity of PCR & Rapid: 1.88%
Rt: 0.81 from 0.85 last week
Since the pandemic began, Greece has confirmed 413,954 infections (daily change: +0.2%). In the confirmed cases of the last 7 days, 35 infections are related to travel from abroad and 1393 to other confirmed cases.
51.2% of the infected are men.
There are 11 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours, bringing the total of pandemic victims to 12,381. Of these, 95.5% had an underlying condition and/or were 70 years old.
A total of 371 Covid-patients -from 376 a day earlier – are on ventilators in hospitals. Their median age is 67 years. 65.5% are men. 86.9% have an underlying condition and/or are aged 70 or more.
2,549 patients have been discharged from ICUs since the pandemic began.
119 Covid-19 patients were admitted to hospital in the last 24 hours (daily change: +16.67%). The average admission of patients with Covid-19 to hospitals over the last 7 days was 128.
The median age of new infections is 43 years (range: 0.2 to 106 years), while the median age of the deceased is 78 (range: 0.2 to 106 years).
Geographic distribution June 11
Of the 791 new cases, 1 were detected at the entrance gates of the country and 5 among travelers already in the country.
The remaining cases are:
400 Attica
84 Thessaloniki
25 Heraklio
Each 17 Evia, Pieria
16 Kozani 14 Larissa
11 Magnisia
Each 10 Corfu, Trikala, Chania
Each 8 Aitoloakarnania, Viotia, Ilia, Imathia
Each 6 Kos, Rhodes, Fthiotida
5 Messinia
Each 4 Argolida, Karditsa, Lakonia, Rethymno, Serres
Each 3 Arcadia, IOannina, Kilkis, Xanthi, Florina, Halkidiki
Each 2 Drama, Naxos, Lesvos, Pella, Fokida
Each 1 Grevena, Evros, Kastoria, KEfalonia, Thira, Mykonos, Paros, Preveza, Samos, Sporades
And so the covid testing in Greece continues to dramatically fall.
In the 7 days prior to 14th May (the day Greece fully opened for tourism), the country carried out 386,870 tests. This was not untypical of the preceding weeks / months during lockdown and is therefore a fair benchmark to use.
Within 7 days (21st May) the weekly tests had fallen by 12.2%. For those who say cases were falling, when you have other countries’ governments looking at your case numbers, accuracy of reporting and your hunting out of variants, no-one would surely want to be seen to be slashing testing so dramatically, suddenly and quickly without a reason other than opening for tourism (nearly 50,000 less tests in the first 7 days).
7 days later (28th May) the weekly testing reduction had reached 18.6% (71,958 fewer tests).
7 days later (4th June) the weekly testing reduction had reached 24% (92,755 fewer tests).
7 days later (today 11th June) the weekly testing reduction has now reached 29.7% from the above benchmark (114,952 fewer tests).
So over the past 4 weeks the total of the reduction in weekly testing is 326,920 tests.
Using a positivity rate of 3%, that is potentially 9,807 missed / unfound cases, together with not finding potentially associated variants.
Notwithstanding a noticeable fall in deaths and intubations, Greece has chosen not to explain why testing has fallen by the best part of 30% in the 4 weeks since it opened for tourism, particularly when the testing numbers until then were stable for weeks and months. Are cases falling because testing is falling or is testing falling because cases are falling. I suspect it is a bit of both. Even so, after so long of consistent testing numbers during lockdown, to immediately cut nearly 50,000 weekly tests within 7 days of opening for tourism is questionable.
It should also be noted that unlike last year (when Greece published that it did not test 89% of air arrivals due to their PLF / QR code), this year I haven’t seen publication of arrival testing numbers whether by air, sea or land.
And of course, all this time, the UK (purveyor of all things green and amber) is going in the opposite direction, ramping testing back up to around one million tests per day.
In the most simplistic terms, with all of today’s news about variants and the UK’s current testing surging through the roof, if you were making a Greek tourism video for the UK government right now, would your headline be, “Our testing is crashing through the floor?”
No.
Does anybody know how long it takes for the government to respond to applications for temporary AMKA status after it is submitted? I submitted mine 2 weeks ago and have yet to receive an email for a vaccination date.