Greece quarantines camp after migrants test positive
Greece has quarantined a migrant camp after 20 asylum seekers tested positive for virus, migration ministry said, its first such facility to be hit since the outbreak of the disease
Greece has quarantined a migrant camp after 20 asylum seekers tested positive for coronavirus, the migration ministry said on Thursday, its first such facility to be hit since the outbreak of the disease.
Tests were conducted after a 19-year-old female migrant living in the camp in central Greece was found infected after giving birth at an Athens hospital last week. She was the first recorded case among thousands of asylum seekers living in overcrowded camps across Greece.
None of the confirmed cases showed any symptoms, the ministry said, adding that it was continuing its tests.
Greece recorded its first coronavirus case at the end of February. It has reported 1,415 cases so far, and 50 deaths.
It is the gateway to Europe for people fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, with more than a million passing through Greece during the migrant crisis of 2015-2016.
Any movement in and out of the Ritsona camp, which is 75 kilometres northeast of Athens and hosts hundreds of people, will be restricted for 14 days, the ministry said. Police would monitor the implementation of the measures.
The camp has an isolation area for coronavirus patients should the need arise, sources have said.
Aid agencies renewed their call for more concerted action at the European level to tackle the migration crisis.
“It is urgently needed to evacuate migrants out of the Greek islands to EU countries,” said Leila Bodeux, policy and advocacy officer for Caritas Europa, an aid agency.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said it was a stark “warning signal” of what might happen if the virus spilled over into less organised facilities on the Greek islands.
“(This) may result in a massive humanitarian crisis. This is a danger both for refugees hosted in certain countries outside the EU and for those living in unbearable conditions on the Greek islands,” she said during a European Parliament debate conducted by video link.
More than 40,000 asylum-seekers are stuck in overcrowded refugee camps on Greek islands, in conditions which the government itself has described as a “ticking health bomb.”
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said Greece is ready to protect its islands, where no case has been recorded so far, but urged the EU to provide more help.
“The conditions are far from ideal but I should also point out that Greece is dealing with this problem basically on its own... We haven’t had as much support from the European Union as we wanted,” he told CNN.
“I think we have a very good track record of dealing with this problem in a very humane manner,” the PM said, referring to dire camp overcrowding.
“We will continue to keep a very, very close eye on what is happening in our camps... We’re ramping up medical facilities,” he said.
No staff were found to be carrying the virus, it said.
The new mother’s case was the first among asylum-seekers living in a Greek camp. The state has run several vaccination campaigns in past years, but no screening had been done for the present virus.
All access to Ritsona camp has been restricted and food will be delivered to the residents, the migration ministry said. Additional medical staff will be sent to the area and all residents will be screened, it added.
As of on Wednesday, Greece’s population of 11 million had recorded 50 deaths and 1,415 cases of novel coronavirus.
In camps on the Greek mainland and islands, where tens of thousands of asylum seekers live in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, regulations have been announced to keep residents as far from the local population as possible.
The migration ministry on Thursday said that another asylum-seeker living in a flat in the northern city of Kilkis had tested positive after giving birth at a local clinic.
The European Union’s top court ruled Thursday that the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland broke EU law by refusing to comply with a refugee quota programme launched after well over a million migrants entered the bloc, most fleeing war in Syria and Iraq.