Shops reopen but Covid pressure remains

Police officers on bicycles patrol Ermou Street in downtown Athens on the first day of the relaunch of retail commerce, on Monday. Shops reopened across many parts of the country with strict health safety guidelines, but not in Thessaloniki and Kozani in the north and in Achaia in the west, due to concerns about rising infections there. Monday’s nationwide Covid-19 numbers, meanwhile, continued to give cause for alarm, with 73 fatalities, 438 hospital admissions and 759 patients on ventilators. New cases eased to 1,866, though this stemmed from 16,332 tests, meaning a positivity rate of over 11%. [Yiannis Liakos/InTime News]