ATHENS –"After a long time, yesterday (Monday) we had 56,000 people make appointments for vaccination, while 13,500 of these are young people aged between 18 and 24," Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said on Tuesday, speaking to SKAI TV.

The minister estimated that the citizens and society responded to the effort because, as he said, everybody understands the need to improve the quality of our lives.

"Seventy-five percent of the citizens aged 60-plus have been vaccinated and the percentage continues to rise but the mutations are, unfortunately, at the heart of the pandemic. We saw the British and now we have the Delta variant, which as you see is spreading very fast," Kikilias underlined.

The minister said that over 90,000 people were vaccinated on Monday, adding that an effort will be made to keep these numbers high. "You understand and we have explained this with honesty that after a huge effort and millions of vaccinations it was reasonable to have a slowdown. Now we must convince some of our compatriots who have doubts, or who are afraid or have been misinformed and may possibly live in remote areas or be bedridden, to get vaccinated. "