Australian-born immunologist Sotiris Tsiodras: Greece would have 13,685 dead if action wasn’t taken

Given that in Greece less than 1% of the population was infected with coronavirus, the country’s Health Ministry spokesperson and infectious diseases expert Professor Sotiris Tsiodras, stressed in his last live coronavirus briefing that if the measures had not been taken in time, Greece would be mourning 13,685 deaths related to the virus.

Sotiris Tsiodras, who was born in Sydney, has been widely credited with alerting the Greek government about the need for early action and helping to stem the spread of the virus.

At the time of reporting, Greece has recorded 2,892 cases and 173 deaths.

As he explained, “based on our mathematical estimates, we had a total case rate of less than 1% of the population. Today 173 deaths have been recorded. With the best possible scenario, ie 0.55% and without strict measures… the number of deaths would average 13,685.”

“On May 26 in our Greece, a total of 16 deaths per one million population were recorded, compared to 815 in Belgium, 574 in Spain, always per one million population, 555 in the United Kingdom and 544 in Italy,” he added.

Tsiodras then cited the data so far collected from two coronavirus studies in Greece. In one, 3,400 blood donors were examined and 24 of the samples were positive, or 0.7%. The second survey looked at 2,569 samples, nine of which were positive, or 0.35%.

“As a global scientific community, the whole Earth has become one. We have lived and are living a difficult life, with millions of people going through the coronavirus and hundreds of thousands dying. We withstood the first phase and limited the spread of the coronavirus,” Tsiodras underlined, emphasising that he himself after four months, wants to return to normalcy, close to his students and patients. At the same time, he announced that updates of the virus in the country will be given in a written statement, starting at the end of this month.

Tsiodras closed the briefing by saying that: “I was always telling the truth. The truth cannot be made a lie and the lie a truth…I repeated many times what is the only certainty in science: The uncertainty. The honesty of saying ‘I don’t know…In our country, despite the losses, the enemy has not had the last word.”