Update – 03/09/2021
September 3, 2021
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As of the latest update by the Greek authorities, the total number of confirmed Covid-19 diagnosed cases in Greece 593.668. 33 new deaths were reported raising the total number to 13,777. The number of patients treated in intensive care units is currently 362. 2,840 new cases were announced yesterday in Greece. 679 of the new cases were found in the Attica region and 293 new cases in the Thessaloniki region.
Greece on Thursday offered unvaccinated healthcare workers a second chance to get a shot against Covid-19 and allow those who have been already suspended to return to work as hundreds of them protested against mandatory vaccination.
Greece has suspended from their jobs nearly 6,000 frontline healthcare workers who missed a September 1 deadline to get at least one vaccine shot, a government official told Reuters.
Hundreds of those workers staged a five-hour work stoppage on Thursday and took to the streets in Athens and other Greek cities for a second time in less than a month to protest against the new rule.
A labor union official for hospital workers POEDIN said that a total of 10,000 unvaccinated staff could be suspended, disrupting operations at understaffed Greek hospitals at a time when infections remained high and were likely to rise further.
“We have worked so hard during the pandemic and this is what we get,” said protester Anna Haritou, who worked as a midwife at an Athens hospital until she was suspended on Wednesday.
Attempting to ease any fallout, the government on Thursday said legislation would be amended to allow workers to be removed from suspension and get back to their jobs immediately as long as they got the first dose in the coming days. A key condition is that they conclude their vaccination.
“Mandatory vaccination for the workers of the NHS (National Health System) was legislated to help safeguarding public health,” Health Minister Thanos Plevris said on Thursday. “Since we do not intend to punish (people), we will introduce an amendment.”
About 53 percent of the Greek population is fully vaccinated and authorities hope to bring that figure up to 70 percent by the autumn.
Greece’s National Organization for Public Health on Thursday confirmed that six cases have been identified of a new coronavirus variant that is being closely monitored by the World Health Organization (WHO), amid concerns that it has the ability to bypass the protection offered by Covid-19 vaccines.
EODY reported that it has identified two cases of the new variant at Athens International Airport, another two in Argolida in the northern Peloponnese region and one each in the capital, Attica, and in Achaia, also in the Peloponnese.
However, it is the highly contagious Delta variant that is still causing the most concern, as its share among thousands of random samples checked by the National Network of Genomic Monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 shot up in the August 2-15 period to 96.7% from 23.6% since the start of the year. Τhe share of the original Alpha strain, meanwhile, dropped in August 2-15 to 2.4% from 58.3%, according to EODY.
Mu, named after the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet, was first detected in Columbia in January and has spread to at least 39 countries. The WHO categorized it as a variant of interest on August 30.
In more detail, the 2,840 new cases detected per Regional Unit:
