Greece ranks 29th worldwide for daily Covid-19 testing

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas referred to the improvement of the country's position in the world ranking for daily tests during a media briefing on Thursday.

Petsas stated that Greece ranks 29th worldwide for the number of coronavirus tests conducted daily per 1 million residents, having improved and climbed up 34 places.

"Our country, despite the significant increase in cases we saw in August, remains firmly among the countries with the best results in the battle against the pandemic. We have already multiplied the number of tests we perform, both at border stations and throughout the country. It is noted that at the beginning of the pandemic we were ranked 63rd in the world in the number of tests per million inhabitants. Back then we carried out a smaller number of tests, as we had taken timely restrictive measures which resulted to a lockdown that drastically restricted the movement of citizens. Then, as the lockdown was lifted and we opened our gates to the world, we drastically increased the number of tests to 17,000 a day, while on average last week the number of tests reached 13,000 per day," he said.

The government spokesman also attributed the good results of Greece in conducting daily coronavirus tests to the "flagship action that we launched for the epidemiological study of the coronavirus in Greece through extensive tests for virus and antibodies, sequencing of viral genomes and genetic analysis. An action of almost €2.5 million funded by the Public Investment Program. It is essentially about the mobilisation of the Greek research community in the effort to deal with the health, but also economic and social crisis. We have utilised our excellent human research potential in order to significantly contribute to the fight against the coronavirus at the level of domestic research."

He noted that this is an important program, which involves the forces of major institutions in the country- National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Medical School, the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, the National Center for Research and Development, the Institute of Technology and Research, the National Centre of Scientific Research "Demokritos", Hellenic Pasteur Institute and all the coronavirus clinics in Greece.