Even as COVID-19 cases keep rising during a third lockdown only now tightened, there’s hope they will recede as vaccinations pick up and that the beginning of the end of the more than year-long pandemic is on the horizon.
“This ordeal is dragging on, lasting a lot longer than we wanted. We might see an increase in deaths and intubations, but the situation will gradually come under control,” Alkiviadis Vatopoulos, a microbiologist from the University of West Attica and a member of the government’s advisory committee, told SKAI TV.
“What frightens us is the unexpected, some regional super-spreader incident we had not accounted for,” he said, with video recordings showing a giant Coronavirus party in Greece’s third-largest city of Patra and other public gatherings in violation of health restrictions adding to the fear.
He said the lockdown due to lift on March 1 will almost certainly be pushed back yet again, more than four months after it was imposed on Nov. 7, 2020 when there was another surge of cases during a lenient second shutdown.
Vatopoulos said there could then in mid-March see schools reopening and retail commerce later and restaurants, bars and taverns in April, with outdoor dining only for now.
The intention, he said, is to “reopen without then having to shut down again,” which has happened repeatedly as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis goes back and forth between trying to save lives and the economy at the same time.
He said the rising number of cases among the young after the virus had mostly targeted the elderly and those with multiple or underlying conditions is being investigated although they have been gathering in groups in public.
He also said with the elderly getting vaccinated first and being more cautious that cases will recede in that group but that there’s anxiety about so many young now contracting COVID-19.
Nikos Tzanakis, a pneumonologist at the University of Crete and President of the Hellenic Thoracic Society told SKAI that cases should peak around March 20 and will see 3,000 cases daily perhaps before starting to drop.
As for a gradual reopening of schools and retail commerce on Monday, March 22, he said that “if the phenomenon starts to de-escalate, we will be able to open, very carefully.”
Aristotle University Environmental and Health Engineering expert Dimosthenis Sarigiannis was more optimistic, expecting a gradual lessening of cases but that pressure on hospitals and intensive care units will continue to rise and hit a peak around March 24-26.
He also said schools could probably reopen on March 22 but said that they shouldn’t until retail stores also open, with conditions to stick to health measures to wear masks and stay a safe social distance from others.
Athens University emergency medicine expert Theodoros Vassilakopoulos, said that Greece is “in its worst phase right now and the situation in Athens is bad,” but adding that, “this time we will be more cautious about returning to normal.”
He told Antenna TV that some 40 percent of citizens over the age of 80 still haven’t been vaccinated and that 30 percent of health workers don’t want to be inoculated, as the government said the program is on schedule although it’s not.
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