2 migrants at Greek facility are first to test positive for coronavirus there
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The first cases of coronavirus at a Greek detention center were detected in two migrants who fled Turkey and were awaiting asylum, officials said on Tuesday.
The asylum-seekers were not showing symptoms of COVID-19 but were placed in a special quarantine facility away from the rest of the migrant camp.
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The two migrants were part of a group of 70 who arrived on two boats to Greece on May 6 and May 10. The group was the first to reach Greece by sea in more than a month after Greek officials tightened border surveillance amidst the coronavirus pandemic to bar the virus from spreading while Turkey simultaneously declared they would not stop asylum-seekers from coming across the border into neighboring Greece.
Officials conducted COVID-19 testing on all 68 other migrants on board the boats as well as other people who came into contact with the patients, and all of the migrants have been placed in quarantine since arriving in Lesbos, officials told the Associated Press.
Human rights advocates have long warned that overcrowding and poor living conditions inside the migrant camps located on Lesbos and other eastern Aegean Sea islands could put some 40,000 asylum-seekers who are being held there — many of whom are unaccompanied minors — at greater risk of contracting coronavirus but no cases had been registered up to now on the islands.
The quarantine camp at Eftalou, on the northern coast, is far from the country’s biggest camp at Moria on Lesbos, where nearly 18,000 people live in facilities designed for fewer than 3,000.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in late April that Greek authorities «have not done enough to address the acute overcrowding and lack of health care, access to adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene products to limit the spread of COVID-19 in camps for asylum-seekers.»
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
