Camp facing lockdown as migrant tests positive
GREECE was considering imposing a lockdown on a refugee camp yesterday after a migrant woman tested positive for coronavirus.
In what would be the first positive case for an asylum seeker in Greece, she was found to have contracted the virus after giving birth at a hospital in Athens. It was not clear whether she contracted Covid-19 in the hospital or had been infected in Ritsona camp, north of the capital.
The woman’s partner tested negative for the virus, but officials were still anxious to trace who else she had been in contact with inside the camp, which hosts around 2,500 people. Greece has long feared the nightmare scenario of coronavirus spreading through its squalid, overcrowded refugee camps on the mainland and on islands in the Aegean.
The most overcrowded facility is on Lesbos, where 20,000 people live in and around a rubbish-strewn camp that has an official capacity of less than 3,000. The lack of showers, running water and soap means keeping clean is extremely challenging, while the idea of social distancing is a nonsense when thousands of people live crammed together in shanty huts.
The virus could spread even more quickly in such conditions than it has done on cruise ships, a humanitarian organisation warned.
Transmission of the virus was swift on ships such as the Diamond Princess, where 700 passengers contracted the virus during a two-month quarantine in Yokohama, but would be even faster in refugee camps, said the International Rescue Committee.
“The rapid spread of Covid-19 on the Diamond Princess showed how the virus thrives in confined spaces but for millions of displaced people their conditions are far more cramped and poorly serviced and the risks are far deadlier,” said the group’s Marcus
Skinner. Meanwhile, Spain has recorded another 864 deaths related to coronavirus, the highest in one day.
More than 9,000 people have died in Spain, which is second only to Italy in fatalities caused by the virus.
Health officials insisted, however, that the rate of new infections was continuing to decline, from 20 per cent a week ago to around 11 per cent.
More than 100,000 people have been infected in Italy and the country’s healthcare system has been stretched to breaking point, with more than 5,500 people in intensive care units.
Doctors in a hospital in Madrid said they were beginning to run out of medicines. In Italy, experts said that infection rates might be reaching a plateau, after which they would begin to decline. “There’s been a reduction in the number of positive cases who require hospital care and that is comforting,” said Angelo Borrelli, the head of the civil protection agency.
But it was impossible to say when the crisis would be over in Italy, he said.
Another 727 people were reported to have died in Italy yesterday, the lowest daily total since last Thursday. It takes the total death toll to 13,155.
However, the number of new infections – 2,937 – rose more steeply than the day before, bringing the total number of cases to more than 105,000.
A third of the 509 deaths registered in France yesterday were from the Paris region, the government said, with the countrywide death toll now at 4,032, making it the fourth country to pass the 4,000-fatalities mark.