No plans to expand mandatory vaccinations, says minister
Despite experts’ warnings of soaring Covid-19 infections, Health Minister Thanos Plevris on Friday said the government did not plan to expand mandatory vaccinations against the virus.
Speaking on Skai radio, Plevris said any new measures, should they be introduced, will involve the social mixing between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in so-called “mixed areas.”
In comments to Skai TV, Nikos Kapravelos, head of the ICUs at the Papanikolaou hospital in Thessaloniki in northern Greece, warned that the fourth coronavirus wave has seen a sharp rise in intubations, adding that people in their 40s – all of them unvaccinated – are now being admitted to ICUs.
Papanikolaou urged the authorities to make vaccination compulsory for high risk individuals aged over 55.
“All ICU beds are occupied at the moment,” he said, adding that providers currently have to perform intubations in operating rooms where patients are left without oversight from a physician.
“We have nothing left to give,” he said.
