Athens, Nov 6 (IANS): Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a three-week nationwide lockdown on Thursday as part of measures to contain the further spread of the novel coronavirus.
"I opt to take drastic measures sooner rather than later. I will not put the lives of our citizens at risk," the Greek prime minister stated in an address broadcast live on public broadcaster ERT, Xinhua news agency reported.
He explained that he took this decision due to the exponential growth of Covid-19 cases in the last week.
"We saw nearly 10,000 cases in five days. We saw a significant increase in hospital admissions, in patients in ICUs, a bad ratio of admissions and discharges," he said.