‘Attica still at risk of collapse,’ expert warns as virus rages

If residents continue to flout health safety measures, Covid-related fatalities could reach as many as 100 a day and new daily infections could pass the 3,000-mark, a virology expert warned on Friday, adding that Attica, in particular, is “still at risk of collapse.”

“Many people say that the measures are unfair and unreasonable, but it is hard to find ideal solutions; you need simple rules and simple measures. When you’re at war, the rules need to be simple and must be applied by everyone,” Dr George Pavlakis, senior investigator at the human retrovirus section of the American Center for Cancer Research of the National Cancer Institute, told Skai TV.

“Ideally, we should shut everything down completely for two or three weeks,” he added.

“For a year now, Greece has avoided the kind of massive tsunami that his Bergamo,” he said in reference to the Italian city that mourned thousands of Covid-related fatalities a day at the peak of the pandemic last year. “I hope it manages to avoid it completely, because we’re in the final stretch now.”

On the upside, Pavlakis noted that Greece is at a better place today than it was earlier in the pandemic. “We have averted disaster, something that is very important, and now we have the vaccines and spring on the way,” he said.

However, Pavlakis also warned that he expects new infections to continue rising over next couple of weeks, with a possible de-escalation of cases starting the week after then, “if measures are applied,” throughout Greece but in Attica in particular.

“I am hoping that we will see the peak towards the middle of next week. I cannot make any projections if we don’t see the peak of the wave,” Pavlakis said.