Greece aims to ‘coexist’ with Covid

ATHENS: Greece aims to "coexist" with Covid-19, its health minister said on Wednesday as the country prepared to further relax restrictions to boost its key tourism industry.

"After two years of pandemic, we are in a different management phase... the phase of coexisting with the virus," Health Minister Thanos Plevris told a news conference. New cases and intensive care hospitalisations were falling and 85 percent of adult Greeks are vaccinated, the minister said.

Greece, whose economy depends on tourism for around a quarter of national income, in February scrapped mandatory screening tests for travellers who hold a European vaccination certificate. The government has said the measures will be adjusted depending on the course of the pandemic.

Plevris on Wednesday rejected the so-called "zero-Covid" model embraced by China, which has seen the city of Shanghai confining most of its 25 million people. "We don’t believe in the logic of zero-Covid," the minister said, calling it a "failure" against the highly contagious Omicron variant.