Greece removes outdoor mask mandate; recommends them for the unvaccinated

As of Saturday, the mandatory use of a mask outdoors ceases with a strong recommendation of the committee of experts of the health ministry however to keep the masks in crowded public spaces.

The health ministry also recommends unvaccinated people or people with underlying diseases to keep wearing protection masks.

The lifting of the measure of the mask outdoors should not be translated as the end of the pandemic, as the virus has not gone, scientists explained.

“It should be clear that as of today, the use of the mask outdoors is not completely abolished,” the president of the Hellenic Pulmonologists Association, Stamatoula Tsikrika, said in a statement to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency  (ANA). She underlined the strong recommendation of the Committee of Experts for maintaining the mask in crowded public spaces, referring especially to people at risk for serious disease and people who have not been vaccinated against SARS Cov-2.

“The epidemiological indicators in our country do not yet allow the complete abolition of the masks even outdoors, while the dynamics of the virus is under close monitoring,” Tsikrika noted.