The Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announced on Tuesday that, from January 16, people over 60 years old will have to be vaccinated against Covid-19, with the possibility of a fine in case of non-compliance.
“They should at least have scheduled a date to get the first dose of the vaccine. They will have top priority in the system to be vaccinated. Otherwise, every month an administrative fine of 100 euros (BRL 632.16) will be imposed,” he said. the head of government, during a meeting of the Council of Ministers.
The money raised from these sanctions will go into a special fund to finance public hospitals, Mitsotakis said.
The Conservative head of government justified the measure by the difficulties facing the public health sector, given the increase in the number of hospitalizations, mostly of people who were not vaccinated against Covid-19.
Despite an improvement in demand for immunizations in recent weeks, of the 580,000 people over 60 who had not been vaccinated at the beginning of November, only 60,000 received the first dose over the course of the month, the prime minister said.
Mitsotakis cited, as an example, the situation in Portugal, where he stated that 98% of people over 60 are already vaccinated, “that is why the occupation of ICUs and deaths are minimal”.
“On the contrary, Greece, despite the great effort that we are all making, the vaccination rate for these ages is still around 83%”, he lamented.
In addition, Mitsotakis recalled the concern with the omicron variant, which had its detection announced last week, saying that it “will also reach the country”, and therefore there is a need to “buy time” with the immunization of the population.
To prevent the spread of Covid-19 at the end of the year, the prime minister announced that two free tests to detect the new coronavirus will be distributed per person, the first during the period from December 6th to 12th, “to identify possible asymptomatic carriers of the virus before Christmas”.
After that, a new delivery will take place from 3 to 7 January, to monitor the transmission of the pathogen during the holiday period, as explained by the head of government.
Although Greece was one of the first countries to impose mandatory vaccinations for some professions, such as health professionals and asylum workers, the rate of people with a complete immunization scheme is 61%.
This Monday, according to official data, 104 deaths were reported by Covid-19 and 6,667 cases of infection. In all, 657 people are intubated in the country’s ICUs.
In all, Greece registered 931,183 positives for the new coronavirus, and 18,067 victims throughout the pandemic.
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