Editorial Ta Nea: Uphill battle

In handling Greece’s public health crisis the government’s reflexes have been very good.

It did not await very bad developments as Spain did but instead operated based on the worst case scenario.

The series of measures announced yesterday, including the closure of commercial shops, are in the right direction.

The government must not veer away from this course of action even if stricter and more restrictive measures are needed.

Such measures will ensure that to the extent possible Greece will always be a step ahead of the virus, at least as compared to other countries, and will not lag behind.
The reason that this is particularly necessary is state services are beset by chronic dysfunctions and nothing can be left to chance.

Greece’s public health infrastructure is capable of handling cases that arrive in time but does not have the means to handle a barrage of cases after the fact.

The paramount objective right now is to avoid at all costs the travails of the Italian health system and to limit as much as possible the dramatic disaster that Italy is experiencing (photo).

There can be absolutely no complacency or laxness.

We are still at the beginning of an extremely difficult uphill struggle which we are obliged to fight until the end under extremely adverse circumstances.