ATHENS  – People in Greece refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are its primary victims, sending occupancy rates in public hospital Intensive Care Unit (ICUs) to nearly 60 percent after they had begun to slow.

Anti-vaxxers and the rise of the Delta Variant from India, which now makes up 85 percent of cases, have combined – along with wild partying on islands and people not wearing masks nor staying apart from each other – to make the pandemic resurge.

The number of admissions to ICUs jumped 29.44 percent in 10 days, said

Univeristy of Patras Medical School professor and pathologist Charalambos Gogos, as the Eleftheria (Freedom) vaccination campaign has stalled.

Only half of the country's population of 10.7 million has been fully vaccinated twi two shots required, apart from the single-shot Johnson & Johnson version from the United States.

Health authorities had said that at least 70 percent was needed to beat back the pandemic that's now a year-and-a-half on and rising again just as it seemed science would slow it before anti-vaxxers became a catalyst and new estimates that the benchmark still isn't enough to work.

“Until we reach the necessary immunity rate, which may reach over 80-85 percent, we need to follow individual protection measures thoroughly,” said Gogos, who also sits at the Health Ministry’s advisory committee, said Kathimerini.

On Crete, where three municipalities have had curfews imposed, the occupancy rate of ICU's is 96.5 percent, he told journalists at a live briefing on the pandemic, adding that the vast majority of the hospitalized patients are a unvaccinated.

A fourth wave of the Coronavirus is rocketing around the world due to the Delta Variant that is especially contagious and dangerous, especially for those who are not vaccination.