Authorities brace for wave of sick workers in health, transportation and education

Officials fear the Omicron runaway variant of the coronavirus will cripple large swathes of the state apparatus from next week.

Vulnerable services include hospitals, public transport, civil service offices, schools and universities. Disruptions of varying severity are expected due to the large number of infections that will keep many employees in quarantine.

There are already signs of dysfunction in hospitals, and state departments such as police and fire departments, where employees cannot work from home, are expected to be the most affected.

Health authorities are closely monitoring the number of cases and their possible trajectory over the next week. On Friday, the number of new contaminations reached a new daily record of 40,560 after reaching 35,580 on Thursday and 28,828 the day before.

Despite the huge leap forward, authorities are happy that the Omicron variant has not put undue pressure on health systems in other countries. But this is mitigated by the fact that there are still many patients with the less easily transmitted but more fatal Delta variant and there was no hoped-for opportunity to remove this burden, or most of it, from the system. . So even if Omicron lives up to its billing as a milder form of the disease, additional hospitalizations will be a problem, which will be exacerbated if large numbers of hospital staff also miss work hours.

So far, it is mostly young people who get sick with the new variant. It remains to be seen to what extent they will infect older and more vulnerable people. In addition, the spike in infections led to delays in PCR test results.

The Ministry of Transport is preparing for possible schedule cancellations if too many staff are incapacitated. But this could be offset by lower demand for transportation services due to the fact that many will be working from home. Officials believe that Athens’ tram and metro are less vulnerable than buses and trolleybuses because there are more staff on reserve.

Assistants to Interior Minister Makis Voridis told Kathimerini that working from home would mainly apply to officials who do not deal directly with the public. The minister himself said that “there is a plan showing, in each agency, how many people can work from home”.