{"id":117392,"date":"2021-04-05T17:54:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T09:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=117392"},"modified":"2021-04-05T17:54:51","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T09:54:51","slug":"covid-19-greece-reopens-shops-despite-high-infection-rate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=117392","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19: Greece reopens shops despite high infection rate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bssnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Greece-reopens-shops-despite-high-infection-rate.jpg\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.bssnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Greece-reopens-shops-despite-high-infection-rate.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>ATHENS, April 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) &#8212; Greece on Monday relaxed a nationwide lockdown by opening most retail shops despite a high level of Covid-19 infections and fatalities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By allowing people to \u201cdecompress\u201d outside their homes as the weather<br>improves, the government hopes to also stem damage to the economy that has taken a major revenue blow from reduced tourism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Customers must pre-book appointments before visiting shops, and up to 20<br>people will be allowed inside at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe are fully booked till Saturday. It\u2019s going to be a good month,\u201d<br>Filippos Hortis, an Athens sports store owner, told Skai TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Critics have noted the paradox of the lockdown being relaxed while new<br>cases of the virus are reported at a rate of over 3,000 daily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is around 1,000 more than when the restrictions were announced in<br>November, with the daily number of deaths now more than double.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI too was surprised when informed of the recommendation (to reopen stores) seeing the daily increase (in infections),\u201d the governor of Central Macedonia prefecture Apostolos Tzitzikostas told Skai TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday\u2019s reopening does not affect department stores and malls, whose<br>operation will be re-evaluated later in April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Restrictions on retail also remain in place in areas around Thessaloniki<br>and Patras, Greece\u2019s largest cities after Athens, because of spiking<br>infections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The finance ministry on Monday announced additional support measures for closed stores to mitigate anger among retail owners in affected areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greece has so far registered more than 275,000 coronavirus cases and over<br>8,300 deaths since the start of the pandemic, including nearly 150 over the<br>weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some 750 people are in intensive care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A firm backer of European vaccine passports, Greece is hoping to kickstart<br>its tourism season from mid-May onwards to claw back some badly needed<br>revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greece expects to spend some 11.6 billion euros ($14 billion) this year to<br>mitigate the impact of the coronavirus on its economy, on top of 24 billion<br>euros spent in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Greek budget forecasts economic growth of 4.8 percent, scaled back from an earlier 7.5-percent estimate owing to lockdown. &#8212; NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ATHENS, April 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) &#8212; Greece on Monday relaxed a nationwide lockdown by opening most retail shops despite a high level of Covid-19 infections and fatalities. By allowing people to \u201cdecompress\u201d outside their homes as the weatherimproves, the government hopes to also stem damage to the economy that has taken a major revenue blow from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":117393,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117392"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/117393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}