Greece announced on Tuesday it would stop free COVID19 testing for unvaccinated people to spur vaccination.
This move comes to block off any rise in the Delta variant infections of the Coronavirus.
On Tuesday, health officials confirmed 4,608 new cases and 32 deaths.
Moreover, the daily count of infections hit a new record of over 4,340 cases in March this year.
Since it recorded the first COVID19 outbreak in February 2020, Greece has confirmed a sum of 566,812 COVID19 cases and 13,466 deaths.
Greek authorities say that only 27 out of the 4,340 cases were foreign as they recorded them on border entry checks.
New measures in Greece
The new law will be effective as of September 13 and will not force people into taking the vaccination.
However, it will end free antigen tests and compel unvaccinated people to test once or twice a week, conditional to their profession.
Furthermore, the price of the antigen test is 10 euros, which is a considerable amount of money.
People in Greece are now getting out of a crisis, and their salaries’ average is 1,161 euros a month.
Greek Officials said nearly six out of 11 million people had already taken one or two shots of the Coronavirus vaccine.
However, Greece needs one million more to build enough immunity among the population.
“In contrast to the autumn of last year, this autumn everyone can get a vaccination,” said Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek Health Minister.
“Do we live, or play Russian roulette with the Coronavirus?” he added.
He also said the country will continue free testing for vaccinated people.
“These measures are not punitive. They are our duty to all those who went through 18 months of the pandemic carefully,” Kikilias said.
He added that it’s also a duty to those who lost their shops, jobs and had to work remotely to protect themselves.
Nearly 53% of the Greek population is fully vaccinated.
The authorities seek to increase that number to 70% by next autumn.
