New Covid cases continue to ease, but trends persist

Thursday’s Health Ministry bulletin on the coronavirus epidemic indicated that new infections appear to be dropping slowly – coming to 599 from 671 on Wednesday and 866 on Tuesday – though fatalities rose to 33 from 25 and 27 the two previous days, bringing the national Covid-19 death toll to 5,387.

Hospitals also remained under pressure with 328 Covid patients in intensive care, against 340 and 337 the two previous days.

Thursday’s 599 new cases emerged from the results of 12,275 tests and took total cases since the outbreak of the pandemic in Greece to 147,283.

This is not the progress authorities had been hoping for after more than two months of a nationwide lockdown, albeit with fewer restrictions than had been imposed in the spring and with a partial reopening of the economy over the holidays.

On December 14, the National Organization for Public Health (EODY) had reported 639 new cases, 62 deaths and 558 patients in intensive care. A month before that, new infections were much higher at 2,835, but the number of fatalities on November 14 – exactly two weeks after the current lockdown started – came to 38 and Covid patients in ICU were at 366.