After quarantining two refugee and migrant camps, Greek health authorities locked down a Roma settlement in Larissa, central Greece after 18 people there were also found to have the dreaded COVID-19 Coronavirus.
The Roma camps are outside the mainstream of society and difficult to control, unlike most of the populace obeying orders to stay homes except for critical missions such as going to supermarkets, banks, pharmacies hospitals and other essential businesses allowed to stay open.
The Roma settlement has about 3,000 people and was put under a strict quarantine on the orders of the Deputy Minister for Civil Protection, Nikos Hardalias, who banned all movement in or out.
That came after a 32-year-old man tested positive for the virus and after tracing 31 contacts that 17 were tested and 12 also found infected.
The incident “confirms the worst-case scenario,” Larissa Mayor Apostolos Kalogiannis told the state-run Athens-Macedonian News Agency, expressing fears of the virus spreading across the community.
Residents at the settlement, which is located near a military base just a couple of kilometers from central Larissa, have been restricted to their homes, with local and regional authorities responsible for delivering food, medicines and other necessities door-to-door until April 23 at least, the report said.
Roads leading to and from the settlement have also been closed by police while a team of doctors from the University Hospital of Larissa was expected to collect more samples for testing starting April 10.
Read more at thenationalherald.com
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