Greece will be getting new coronavirus vaccines in the next two months, Alternate Health Minister Mina Gaga said on Thursday, with Novavax arriving on 21 February and Sanofi in April.
Earlier this week the government had announced that the first batch of 168,000 doses of Novavax will be administered at inoculation centers in early March.
At a regular briefing, Alternate Health Minister Mina Gaga also said that 350 patients are now cared for in private hospitals due to public healthcare being overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, pediatric infectious diseases doctor Vana Papaevangelou said that infection rates are stabilising but people with active infections have reached 140,000 nationally. Of the patients hospitalised in Greece, 80 per cent are older than 55.
Professor Gkikas Magiorkinis – who along with dr. Papaevangelou are on the Health Ministry’s coronavirus committee – said that more than 70 per cent of patients who die of COVID-19 are over 70 years of age.
For this age group, “no variant of the virus is entirely safe, even if they go through one infection, that should not give them a false sense of safety and does not guarantee that a second time around they will not be in danger”, he said.
On a more positive note, Dr. Magiorkinis noted that the the pressure on Greece’s national health system is expected to alleviate.
