Survey Finds Majority of Greeks Optimistic About Vaccine, Pandemic

The Greek think tank DiaNEOsis published a survey on Monday that found that the majority of Greeks are feeling positive about the future of the pandemic now that the worst of it is over.

Of all the people surveyed, 68.4% believe that the worst of the pandemic is already over, and that normal life will return shortly in 2022.

Think tank’s survey finds renewed hope for Greeks

The effort to vaccinate the Greek population is credited as the source of optimism about the future of the course of the pandemic.

A total of 57.2% believe that the government’s efforts to vaccinate the public and re-open the country are the right way to move on from the pandemic.

A whopping 97.8% of people in Greece were happy with the process of obtaining the COVID-19 vaccine. Only 4.8% of those surveyed said they are not interested in getting the vaccine.

These figures are a steep turnaround from the pubic sentiment about the pandemic during 2020. This newfound hope is hard-earned after Greece’s fight against the coronavirus.

Looking back on a difficult 2020

Since the beginning of the pandemic, a total of 404,163 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in the country, including all those who have recovered from the virus.

Additionally, a total of 2,442 patients have been discharged from ICUs around the country since the beginning of the pandemic.

Greece eased its way out of a strict six-month lockdown this past May.

The nation, one of the tourism hotspots of the entire world, reopened to travelers and lifted the ban on travel between regions on May 14. It also did away with the rule stipulating that all citizens must send an SMS to be allowed to leave the house for any reason at that time.

Akis Skertsos, deputy minister to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, stated to the press in a briefing that “We are putting the lockdown behind us.”

Greece’s path forward is through the vaccine

As of late May, more than five million coronavirus vaccines have been given to people living in Greece. As the small nation passed the huge milestone on Tuesday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis proudly tweeted about the country’s successful vaccination campaign.

Although this does not mean that five million individuals in Greece have been fully inoculated, as that requires two doses of the mRNA vaccines, as of May 24th the country can proudly claim to have successfully administered five million vaccines in total.

This new program which aims to vaccinate all islanders — regardless of the size of their populations — by June 25 follows the success of the current vaccination scheme on islands with under 10,000 residents, which has been in full swing since April.

That scheme involved inoculating all residents, regardless of age, on 85 islands in Greece which fall under the population threshold.

This inoculation plan is working alongside the Tourism Ministry’s plans to vaccinate 280,000 tourism sector workers against coronavirus as soon as vulnerable people have been vaccinated.

The percentage of fully-vaccinated people in Greece is even higher than in Germany, where only 11.3% of the adult population has been fully vaccinated at this point.