Greece is preparing to reverse lockdown measures with the country’s prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis holding back-to-back teleconference calls today to discuss how best to revoke the restrictions, Helena Smith, the Guardian’s Athens correspondent, reports.
Return to normality is expected to begin Monday, 4 May, when small shops, hairdressers, barbers and beauticians will be to go back to work again. One senior government aide told the Guardian the opening of barbers and hairdressers was regarded as a much-needed “psychological boost” after what would be almost two months of lockdown.
“People can’t only be ordered around,” he said. “They also need psychological support.”
The centre right administration took a “hard and early” approach to enforcing restrictions, closing schools on 10 March amid fears of Greece’s austerity-hit health system being quickly overwhelmed. Within days cafes, restaurants, malls, museums and shops followed.
After a decade of riding the country’s roller coaster debt crisis it was thought that a nation more usually associated with civil disobedience would rebel against adhering to the barrage of rules and regulations that containment of the pandemic has demanded. Instead they were adhered to in almost exemplary fashion. As a result Greece, to date, has had a sum total of 2,490 confirmed coronavirus cases and 130 fatalities.
“The objective of the confinement measures is not to remain in a glass bowl, stuck in our homes,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas said earlier this week. “The objective is to take back our lives and win back our way of life temporarily deprived of us by this cunning and invisible enemy.”
But recent outbreaks in a migrant facility and medical clinics in Athens have also proved there is no room for complacency. “The situation is good but can easily slip,” the infections diseases professor and health ministry spokesman on the coronavirus, Sotiris Tsiodras, told reporters Thursday.
With that in mind the loosening of restrictions will be gradual and, officials say, staggered over the course of several weeks possibly through to July. Schoolchildren are expected to begin returning to class on 11 May but younger pupils may not be back at school until the end of the month.
Mitsotakis, who has deferred to scientific advice throughout the crisis, is expected to address the nation on Monday to explain how the easing of measures will unfold.
