The Greek Government has responded promptly to the swine flu out break this week and has announced that there have been no cases of swine flu detected in Greece.
“There has been not one outbreak in this country,” Greek Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos announced on Thursday at the European Union’s special Health Ministers Council meeting in Luxemburg .
Avramopoulos briefed his counterparts on prevention measures taken in Greece to handle the flu.
Avramopoulos reported that Greek airports had been put on standby and that special heat sensors had been installed on the premises to detect passengers with unusually high body temperatures.
Several hospitals have been supplied with the necessary medicines to treat anyone brought in with symptoms of swine flu.
The Athens airport is distributing information sheets on swine flu and instructions that passengers contact the authorities in the event that they have any symptom related to swine flu within the first 10 days after their arrival in Greece.
Avramopoulos clarified that six people had visited Greek hospitals of their own volition and been found to be clear of the virus. Two of those examined recently returned from a vacation in Mexico, where the flu broke out. The remainder were found to be suffering from a common cold.
Earlier in the week officials from the Greek Ministry of Agricultural Development and Foodstuffs reassured the public that Greek agricultural producers did not have a problem with swine flu.
Deputy Agricultural Development and Foodstuffs Minister Constantine Kiltidis and the ministry’s Flu Supervision Committee President Spyros Kyriakis stressed at a meeting held at the ministry that Greece is not in any immediate danger since EU legislation forbids the importation of live pigs and pork from Mexico.
Kiltidis underlined that the Greek Government has taken all necessary measures to ensure that stockbreeding is safe and carried out in accordance with bio-security rules.
Kyriakis suggested calm, pointing out that Europe and Greece still have no problems from this specific outbreak of the swine flu virus.
An expert on infectious diseases, Sotiris Tsiodras, said there was no cause for alarm in Greece. “Like everywhere else in the world, there is concern but infection from person to person is only occurring in Mexico,” he said.