ATHENS, Greece – A major contact verification and search operation in Greece’s largest migrant camp on the eastern island of Lesbos detected 17 cases of COVID-19 among the 12,500 citizens of the overcrowded settlement, the government said Tuesday.
Health and Migration Ministry officials said medical groups had conducted 1,600 coronavirus tests at the Moria facility, designed to house another 2,800 people, with some 400 more to be held in the coming days.
The camp was quarantined until September 15, with a police cordon to enforce the access and exit ban.
Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said Monday night that all infections were related to a Somali boy who left the camp after receiving asylum in Greece, had gone to Athens but had not discovered paintings or homes there and had returned to Moria. Not without delay to verify on Tuesday that the virus had spread only through the type.
Human rights teams and charities working with migrants have criticized Greece for life situations in Moria, which is made up of an important camp surrounded by an extensive tent town.
Since the pandemic erupted, Greek officials have focused on preventing COVID-19 outbreaks in narrow island camps in eastern Aegean, interrogating others arriving on smugglers’ boats from Turkey and testing the virus before allowing them into camps. until last week, when the Somali boy returned to live in an outdoor tent in the main countryside.
Mitarachi said in an interview with Alpha TV on Monday that the incident had strengthened the government’s determination to build closed island resorts for asylum seekers, where access and exit would be strictly controlled.
“We’re involved in that, and that’s why we want closed centers that provide more area for each and every asylum seeker,” he said. “People granted asylum will have to leave the centres” after they are granted official refugee status. , he said.
There have also been minor outbreaks of COVID-19 in some camps on the continent, which, however, are much smaller than the island’s services and where it is more difficult for the virus to spread uncontrolled.
Measures to block the first phase of the pandemic and stricter monitoring of land and sea borders with Turkey, from which the maximum number of asylum seekers enter the country of the European Union, have particularly reduced migration flows to Greece.
According to UN figures, around 12,000 people have entered Greece so far this year, while by 2019, the total number of arrivals was 75,000.
Mitarachi said that this summer, for the first time, the number of migrants arriving in Greece decreased that the number of those who left the country, either through resettlement programmes to other EU countries or through deportation after they were denied official refugee status.
The Greek economy is in a recession caused by a pandemic, as it was beginning from a 10-year monetary crisis, and unemployment is around 17%.
“The fact is that our country is an exciting destination for migrants and refugees when it comes to the hard labor market,” Mitarachi said.
———
Follow AP of the virus outbreak in https://apnews. com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews. com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
24/7 policy of the latest news and events