Category: Coronavirus

Symi Spring in the time of Covid-19 continued

blog 17 March 2020 amphitheatre
Work on building an amphitheatre in the square in Yialos.
blog 17 March 2020 duck
Looking for a mate.
blog 17 March 2020 kids 1
Nanny goats and kids, ewes and lambs are everywhere at the moment, glorying in the spring abundance.
Blog 17 March 2020 Kos lift inside
The sign inside the lift of the hotel we stayed in in Kos.
blog 17 March 2020 Kos lift outside
The sign on the outside door of the same lift. There was just enough room for me and one suitcase. Nicholas took the stairs!

blog 17 March 2020 poppyCyclamen March 2020

It is the wise sailor who makes sure he is in port around the equinox.  Northerly gales up to Beaufort Force 9 are hammering Greece at the moment, disrupting ferry schedules and depositing fresh snow in the mountainous regions.  It is only 10 degrees centigrade on Symi today.  Pedi bay does not look anything like the photograph above which I took a few days ago.  Rolling white caps march past the entrance to the bay today and waves are breaking along the shore line.  The weather is not expected to improve until Thursday.

The newest directives coming through are that anyone coming into Greece from abroad must now go into quarantine for 14 days to limit any new infections arriving in the country.  You will note that the article makes specific mention of people coming in from the UK where little is being done to prevent the spread of contagion.  More shops and businesses are to be closed with effect from tomorrow. At the same time supermarket trading hours have been extended by two hours in the evening and supermarkets are allowed to trade on Sundays for the next 4 weekends. The idea behind this is to reduce crowding and make it easier for shops to enforce the spacing regulations.

More help is also being arranged for the elderly, including reallocating civil servants to helping the needy rather than working directly with the general public.  In the meantime the government has also succeeded in persuading the all-powerful Greek Orthodox Holy Synod to co-operate and reduce church services.

Reports are coming back that the on line tuition system is popular with the children and seems to be working. Early days yet but at least they got things rolling fairly quickly.

More tomorrow.  In journalistic speak, ‘as events unfold’.

Keep well and safe everybody.

Symi Spring in a time of Covid-19

Symi in particular and Greece in general has changed a lot in the last week or so.  On Tuesday afternoon I was at an elegant tea party in Chorio, nibbling crustless smoked salmon sandwiches and eyeing the dishes of whipped cream and strawberries when suddenly various phones around the table went ‘ping’.  All the mothers of school-age children discovered that the schools were closing down for a fortnight with immediate effect. That was the start.

The next day, when the WHO declared the pandemic, the messages on phones and in social media gained momentum.  Schools and universities closed, as well as clubs, indoor play grounds, kindergartens, art galleries, museums, archaeological sites, cafes, bars, restaurants, tavernas, department stores, shopping malls and, eventually also tourist hotels (shut until 30 April) and finally, last night, the borders with Albania and North Macedonia and the sea border with Italy.  Cruise ships, which had been using Rhodes as a kind of bolt hole after being turned away from Limassol in Cyprus and Haifa in Israel are now barred from stopping in Greece. The directive also includes sailing yachts so anyone who over winters their boat in the cheap marinas of nearby Turkey may have a problem if their paperwork expires before the ban is lifted.

We are all supposed to be self-isolating as much as possible, something which the state has been having difficulty in implementing, hence the increasingly draconian shut downs.  For example, Saturday was an unseasonably sunny spring day so all the bored Athenians who could not while away the time in their usual fashion, in cafes, galleries and the like, headed for the beach.  Understandable but when several thousand people head for the beach they are not exactly following the principles of isolation that were intended by the closures.  Hasty legislation followed, shutting down organised beaches as well as ski resorts.

The police are actively going round, ensuring that businesses that should be closed are doing so.  Only supermarkets, pharmacies, bakeries, take aways and banks are allowed to be open at the moment and that is within certain parameters.  The number of people inside at any one time is limited and safe spacing must be maintained.  This morning legislation kicks in, limiting the number of people in supermarkets at any one time to 1 per every 10 square metres and they should maintain a distance of at least 2 meters apart in the check out queue.

Symi is very quiet.  The cafes and bars in Chorio and Yialos that are normally open all year round are sealed up with their chairs stacked on their tables.  Scena in Chorio and the International Taverna in Yialos which had been open through the winter are offering take away food and I have noticed on the Rhodian newsfeeds that many Rhodian restaurants are also announcing that they will be keeping their kitchens open for take aways and deliveries.  With the law coming through at such short notice they have perishable stock that needs using up and there is no knowing how long these closures will last. The fact that late Saturday night it was announced that tourist hotels and holiday accommodation were to remain closed until at least 30 April means that there won’t be much trade apart from locals.

I must get on now with sorting tins and bottles and making a shopping list in case we have to stay at home completely.  More tomorrow!