Schools throughout Greece will open today as planned said government spokesperson Yiannis Economou on Sunday in an interview with Mega TV, despite the rising cases of the Omicron variant with more than 50,000 cases recorded in the last 48 hours.
"Despite its fast transmissibility, the Omicron variant does not lead to many hospitalisations or creates serious problems," said Economou, stressing the importance of extensive diagnostic testing in order to detect any cases among students or teachers.
"In this way, children are more protected inside the school environment than outside it. Schools are also open for educational, social and psychological reasons. We are opening schools, as it is happening in the rest of Europe," he explained.
Economou also said that increasing vaccination coverage is always a very important priority. Making it mandatory for people over 60 helped a lot, he added. "Some 200,000 people aged 60 and over got vaccinated. The booster dose has also contributed significantly," the government spokesman noted,
Greece confirmed 18,592 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, and 37,676 cases on Saturday confirmed the National Public Health Organization (EODY) .
Since the pandemic began, Greece has confirmed 1,507,616 infections (daily change: +1.2%). In the confirmed cases of the last 7 days, 588 infections are related to travel from abroad and 1,767 to other confirmed cases.
