COVID-19: Two Migrants Test Positive On Greek Island

Two migrants who recently arrived from Turkey have tested positive for COVID-19 on the Greek island of Lesbos, local officials said on Wednesday.

The pair, whose details were not immediately available, are currently quarantined in tents in a coastal area far from the island’s overcrowded migrant camps, officials said.

They are part of a group of 51 asylum seekers from Afghanistan and from African nations who landed on the island on May 6, a local police source said.

Any Greeks who came into contact with the group have so far tested negative.

More than 150 people have died from COVID-19 in Greece. Migrant camps have been placed under lockdown until May 21.

There have been confirmed cases in two camps and at a hotel on the mainland — although none in migrant camps on the islands, where the worst congestion occurs.

There are over 33,000 asylum seekers packed into camps on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos, that were originally built to handle fewer than 6,100 people.

Officials on Wednesday were also probing an outbreak in a Roma neighbourhood near the central city of Larissa, with 10 new cases in an area where contagion had also surfaced in April.

Aris Psyhas, a Larissa city spokesman, said seven of the 10 cases were members of the same family.

So far, 60 people from the Roma neighbourhood have tested positive and are quarantined in a local clinic, Psyhas told AFP.

(AFP)