Greeks' relief as coronavirus lockdown eased but fears over impact on vital tourism industry loom

  • By ITV News producer Maria Kagkelidou in Athens

I am walking the streets of Athens with a smile on my face and notice that everyone around me is in a similarly good mood.

People are ordering takeaway coffees, cleaning up workplaces, and going about their business with a spring in their step.

When we chat among ourselves, many mention that the head of the government’s anti-Covid-19 task force, Dr Sotiris Tsiodras, looked unusually chirpy while delivering his daily briefing on Monday.

So we are all visibly relieved, and it’s not just because many of us have just been to the hairdressers for the first time in two months and had masked professionals repair the damage that partners and offspring inflicted on our manes during lockdown.

Greeks are going back to work - and grateful to have the work still there. Credit: AP

Salons reopened on May 4 after seven weeks in lockdown, along with bookshops, repair shops and sporting goods outlets.

As long as they stick to safety instructions, Greeks can visit them freely, without having to text the authorities’ five digit number to ask for permission, as the strict lockdown measures are gradually lifted.

It is exhilarating that the country is coming out of this dystopian adventure.

When carnival parades were cancelled in late February and life as we know it gradually came to a near-halt over the following weeks, a sense of dread took over.

We spent our days glued to our screens, reading monstrous stories about thousands of people dying in neighbouring - and much richer - northern Italy and then Spain.

The numbers of local cases and of Covid-19 patients in intensive care kept growing.

We feared many of us wouldn’t make it because we knew our health system to be tragically weakened after a decade of crisis and austerity.

Dreaded outbreaks in Greece’s numerous cramped refugee camps have not materialised. Credit: AP

We had under 600 functioning intensive care units for a population of 10 million.

Most of those were already occupied by people in dire need of medical assistance.

We were certain the economy, which had just been settling down to some sort of normality and gearing up for the first really good year since 2007, would take yet another severe hit.

But now the fog is lifting.

We lost 146 of our loved ones to coronavirus, each death a tragedy, but overall a toll much smaller than we dared hope.

Dreaded outbreaks in Greece’s numerous cramped refugee camps have not materialised.

That’s quite an achievement, we keep telling each other.

And believe me, it’s not often in the last decade Greeks have caught themselves feeling a sense of collective achievement.

Many also feel relief that there is at least some work to go back to.

Hundreds of thousands of people, workers, small business owners and freelancers alike received a furlough payment by the government to tide them over the past seven weeks.

Businesses were allowed to temporarily shut down, tax and social security obligations were pushed back, commercial landlords were ordered to reduce rents, and utilities were instructed to keep supplying their customers.

Greece began easing its lockdown measures against coronavirus on Monday Credit: AP

One of the biggest problems now is that the effectiveness of all these measures is in large part out of the hands of the Greeks themselves.

Greece's fate lies instead in the hands of the millions of tourists from the US, UK and other European countries; tourism accounts for 20% of the Greek economy and one in four jobs, according to the country’s national statisticians.

Greeks desperately want tourists to return, but at the same time they are worried that they will bring the virus with them.

The two most important countries for Greek tourism, Germany and the UK, are both facing severe Covid-19 challenges.

Germany saw a rise in cases after it begun lifting restrictions; the UK is now the worst-hit country in Europe.

Such is the seriousness of the situation that Dr Tsiodras has mentioned the UK specifically almost every evening during the last few daily briefings.

“It’s a paradox when it comes to pandemics and it is related to the [issue of] timely adoption of measures,” the Harvard educated professor told Greeks while trying to explain why fatalities in the UK have surpassed those of tragically-hit Italy.

“A country that had its own wave much later than others has suffered more losses in human lives.”

Worried Greeks will be looking north and west in the next few weeks and praying for a swift end to the epidemics in their European friends and allies.

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