Greece’s largest public hospital prohibits visitors for 2 weeks due to mini Covid-19 outbreak among staff

Greece’s largest public hospital, and one of the biggest in southeast Europe, on Monday announced that it was prohibiting the entry to non-patients (visitors, guardians etc) for two weeks – sans emergency cases – following a mini outbreak of the Covid-19 virus among staff.

Specifically, 92 physicians and nursing staff, out of a workforce of 3,400 at the Evangelismos Hospital, have tested positive for the coronavirus over the past week or so. Of the latter, 57 staff members will enter into a five-day quarantine on Tuesday, while the remaining 35 are returning from quarantine.

Hospital administrators, however, emphasized that the infections were not acquired inside the hospital.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Greek public health officials on Monday, the first work day of the new year, said roughly 70 percent of all new Covid-19 infections in Greece’s most populous regions are now of the Omicron variant.

The same officials said the more contagious variant, compared to the Delta variant, appears to exhibit a lower morbidity and mortality rates.