Greece: twelve crew members of a cruise ship tested positive for Covid-19

Coming from Milos, the ship is now expected Tuesday morning at the port of Piraeus (illustrative image).

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In Greece, twelve crew members of a cruise ship tested positive for the coronavirus, before being placed in isolation.

All were asymptomatic.

More than 1,500 people are currently on board this Maltese-flagged vessel.

Coming from Milos, an island in the Cyclades where it was located, the ship is now expected Tuesday morning at the port of Piraeus, where a series of new tests should be carried out.

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With our correspondent in Athens,

Joël Bronner

The “Mein Schiff 6” is one of those tourist boats that looks like a huge floating hotel and stops from island to island and port to port.

By the time 150 random tests were conducted among the more than 650 crew members, detecting around ten positive cases for Covid, nearly 1,000 cruise passengers were on board, many of them Germans.

By press release, the port authorities of Piraeus indicated that this boat had started to sail the Greek seas in mid-September and that it was "the first to make a circuit in the eastern Mediterranean and then to reach Piraeus, after 6 month of suspension ”of cruises in Greece.

A country that has been relatively spared since the start of the pandemic, since less than 400 people have officially died there.

But since the opening to tourism this summer, the situation has changed and the Greek Prime Minister said at the end of the week " 

the virus is here 

".

For the past month, between 100 and 400 new daily cases have been announced in this country of 11 million inhabitants and restrictive measures have been increasing, in particular in Athens and its region.

As a last resort, the authorities do not rule out new confinement.

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