“I feel particularly proud that we have used this crisis to actually change the image of the country” mentioned Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during his introductory speech at a conference held via teleconference by the Miller Centre of the University of Virginia and Brookings Institution for Greece’s success in addressing the pandemic and for the challenges ahead.
The Prime Minister, among other things, referred to the European Commission’s proposal for the European economy. “The European Commission today announced a very ambitious program, we call it the Recovery Fund,” he claimed. “Greece is going to be a big beneficiary,” he added.
“What the European Commission is proposing is not just good for Greece, but for the European project as a whole. You know that Europe has never really moved forward in a completely linear manner, there are periods of paralysis and then sort of a great leap forward, maybe this is an opportunity. I hope that it is an opportunity to do something really bold, something that may reinvigorate the whole European project in a way”, Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted.
“This is not a crisis that we can overcome without a large super weapon and I think that what the European Commission is proposing is big, what the ECB has done is also big and combining the two, even if the European Union is led ultimately in a common issuance of debt (even at the Commission level) to fund a program that focuses on business rather than loans, this will be a huge step for the EU. For the demonstration of solidarity in a tangible manner, helping all countries to absorb the crisis”, Kyriakos Mitsotakis underlined. He added that even countries that are hesitant about going down that path, they are very much dependent on the single market, probably more than Greece, and any collapse of the single market would cost them dearly.
“Heroic leadership”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis was introduced by the President of Brookings, General John R. Allen, who spoke of “heroic leadership”. Mr Allen spoke of “the brave and timely decisions” of the Greek Prime Minister in the coronavirus crisis, noting that “they have come to be deeply admired in the United States and around the world”.
“Within 10 months of his election as the Prime Minister, he has managed to bring Greece to the fore as a global leader and decisive leadership and decisive governance and has helped to keep untold thousands safe and well in the process,” noted General Allen. “And indeed as the United States and several nations around the globe still battle Covid-19, we turn to Greece for best practices and inspiration”, he added.
The Prime Minister attributed Greece’s success to four crucial elements: the speed in taking difficult decisions, the honest communication with the citizens entrusted to the health experts, the immediate strengthening of the health system and the protection of vulnerable citizens, and as a result, the care structures of the elderly were also protected against the coronavirus.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed that the Greek government acted quickly, taking decisions very early, especially to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. He cited as an example the government’s decision to suspend the Patras carnival celebrations, which was taken before the first case in the country was recorded, despite criticism at the time.
He pointed out that, following discussions with Public Health experts, it was obvious that Greece would move towards some form of lockdown. “I took the decision to do it early rather than late and I think it was clearly the right decision. The models tell us that had we delayed even by a week or a couple of weeks, the trajectory of the epidemic would have been completely different”, stated Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“The floor was given to the experts – We tried to build trust amongst the Greek population.”
The Greek PM underlined that the government took care to communicate its message to the citizens, urging them to stay at home and follow the basic rules of social distances, adding that it was a clear goal to regain the relationship of trust with the citizens. For this reason, as he stated, the briefings of the citizens were entrusted to experts.
“We have protected and strengthened the National Health System”
The Prime Minister also described the rapid moves launched to strengthen the National Health System by doubling the capacity of the Intensive Care Units within a few weeks. He also stressed that the medical staff did an excellent job, emphasising that there was no loss of any health worker by Covid-19.
“The difficult task is ahead of us”
Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed that it is very good to receive international acknowledgement for handling the crisis, adding, however, that the difficulties are still ahead of us, and the most complex challenge of reopening is related to how to reopen for travellers from abroad.
Regarding Turkey, the Prime Minister noted that in early March, Turkey attempted to blackmail Europe, sending thousands of desperate people to the Greek-Turkish border. “We said no, this will not happen. We have protected our borders with absolute respect for human life”, he noted. He added that Greece wants an open and constructive relationship, with open channels of communication, which will at least ensure the ease of tensions. He noted that he firmly wants a constructive dialogue with Ankara, but only if the conditions allow it.
During his introductory statement, Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated:
“Let me start by referring to a comment that General Allen made that the US is turning to Greece for “best practices and inspiration”. Just think about that and whether you would, in the context of what happened to Greece over the past 10 years, how likely was it maybe six twelve months, two years three years ago, to actually use that phrase for Greece.
I feel particularly proud that we have used this crisis to actually change the image of the country. And indeed it was probably unexpected for many people that we would do well in handling Covid-19 for reasons, which should seem obvious to all of us: This is a country that it was just coming out of a 10-year crisis, with a national health system that was put under a lot of pressure, with an older population. A country which was not perceived as very conducive as to setting ambitious goals and actually achieving them.
But we have managed to perform quite well overall. Every loss of life is a tragedy, but only 173 people perished in total in Greece from the Covid-19 epidemic. We have had over the past couple of weeks only a handful of new cases per day, we have succeeded in essentially eliminating community transmission, we have less than 20 people in intensive care units. So, for all effective purposes we consider that we have managed to dodge the bullet and contain the first wave of the outbreak of the pandemic.
How did we do it? Four points. In retrospect with hindsight they may seem rather obvious, trust me that was not the case when we actually took those decisions.
The first: Take the decisions very early. It was obvious to me, after consulting with our public health expert, that we would be moving into some sort of lockdown. That was inevitable in my mind. I took the decision to do it early rather than late and I think it was clearly the right decision. The models tell us that had we delayed even by a week or a couple of weeks, the trajectory of the epidemic would have been completely different.
So we took decisions very early. For example, we decided not to have our annual carnival celebrations in the third largest city in Greece, in Patras, even before we had the first Covid-19 case in Greece. We were just looking at what was happening in Italy at the time. And there were a lot of people who were critical when we took the decisions citing the dramatic economic impact, but it was sort of obvious to me at the time – what is probably even more obvious now – that there is no inverse relationship between taking drastic measures and suffering a very deep recession. What we see now is that the countries that have done better in containing the epidemic, those are invariably the countries that took measures earlier, may actually be in a better position to recover faster. Still the jury’s still out on that. That is my expectation of what will happen.
The second thing that we did is that we communicated it very clearly and tried to build trust amongst the Greek population. I didn’t do any daily press briefings. I outsourced the communication job to our top epidemiologist and our head of our Civil Protection Agency. We essentially tried to convince people that it was the right thing to do to stay at home and to follow the basic rules of social distancing. The Greeks followed our advice. Of course, there were fines for people breaking the lockdown, but this was not an enforcement exercise, it was an exercise in collective behaviour for the common good.
And it was very surprising to many that Greeks, which were considered to be very rather independent and not following and not very prone to actually sticking to rules, actually obeyed the basic guidelines. This is a collective success and I am very grateful to the Greek population for actually doing what the experts told them would be right to do for them and eventually for all of us.
The third thing that we did was to very quickly strengthen our National Health Service. We repurposed hospital beds, we essentially doubled the number of ICU units within weeks. We managed to get enough personal protective equipment to cover all our health care needs. And that gave also our health care personnel the additional comfort that they were being looked after, and they did a fantastic job. We didn’t lose a single health care professional from Covid-19 and we had extremely few infections within our hospitals. We managed to protect our national health system in a rather effective way.
And the last thing we did very well was to protect the more vulnerable. From day one, we decided we have to protect our elderly population. In Greece we have families of three generations that frequently live together. We made a crystal clear case to make sure that our message was communicated very clearly to the more vulnerable parts of our population, people with underlying health conditions, but in particular our older population.
We also managed to protect our nursing homes. We didn’t have a single fatality in publicly run nursing facilities for elderly care centres in the country, so we managed to protect the elderly population rather successfully.
Of course, it is very good to receive the sort of international acknowledgement regarding our handling of the crisis, but we acknowledge that the difficult task is still ahead of us. Reopening – we’ve said so from the very beginning – is much more complicated than actually closing down the economy. We have started reopening the economy since May 4th when we actually lifted the horizontal lockdown. We’ve done it very progressively. We are monitoring new cases extremely closely. We haven’t seen any spike in the new cases after we have started to open up the economy. Of course, the weather is helping us because we are primarily outdoors, so we’re encouraging people to actually be outdoors and we are asking them to be much more vigilant when they are indoors.
We have made masks mandatory on public transport, we’ve made masks mandatory in the hospitality sector and the food sector for people actually working in these businesses. We want to make sure that the basic rules that we put in place, which is social distancing, personal hygiene and masks, whenever they are required, are being respected by the population.
One risk, which I see, is to be a victim of our own success, in the sense that people do become complacent. It is only natural after two and a half months that people are happy about our success and then they tend to forget about the basic rules of social distancing. So, we need to remind them constantly that we have not eliminated the virus, the virus is still here. We expect the transmission rates to be much lower during the summer, but people still need to be vigilant and they need to be careful.
Of course, the most difficult, most complicated challenge in opening up has to do with how do you open up to foreign travellers, how do you gradually open up tourism sector, how do we make sure we salvage something of our tourism season, because Greece is very dependent on tourism, as it is almost 20% of Greece’s economy. And how do we make sure that people who travel to Greece do so safely, still have a great experience and don’t contribute to any new outbreak of the virus.
This is a complicated exercise. I am happy to talk about it in more detail during the Q&A session, but I think we’ve we thought it out in a lot of detail and I do expect to be able to welcome tourism and tourists as of July 1st to Greece based again on the pattern that we will put in place regarding which countries we will open up to first”.
