From Saturday, Greece will shut down all its non-essential business. The country will be divided into high-risk and under-surveillance zones, the government announced, according to Bloomberg News.
Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared a three-week national lockdown from 6 am Saturday. Following a prolonged rise in COVID-19 cases and an increase in the number of patients in intensive care, Greece plunges into lockdown again.
In his televised address, PM said that the lockdown aimed at the protection of population from the novel pathogen.
“If we continued to see the same rate of increase in cases as in the past week we’d have thousands in our hospitals. We want citizens as allies,” the head of government said.
The EU country of around 11 million people has recorded a new daily record high of 2,646 new cases on November, 4. The occupancy rate of total intensive care units currently stands at 69%. The total number of infections in the country is now 46,892, according to the health ministry.
The Greek prime minister, like other European leaders, had sought to spare his country from the economic effects of a lockdown this fall. Meantime, the European Commission sees Greece’s economy contracting 9% in 2020 and debt reaching 207.1% of GDP before declining to around 195% in 2022.
