ATHENS — "At a time when dozens of patients cannot get an ICU bed because the public hospitals have collapsed and hundreds of doctors are on waiting lists to be hired by the national health system, the government presents as solution, the forced drafting of 200 self-employed doctors," the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) said in an announcement on Monday.

"The government is deceiving patients and those working in the health sector that this will cover the thousands of shortages of doctors and nurses in public hospitals," KKE said.

At the same moment that the public health units aren't able to meet the major needs of the patients, the government offers immunity to the health sector's business groups so they can continue to profit in the midst of a pandemic and also subsidises them for any patients that they do hospitalise, the announcement said.

According to KKE, what was "necessary and realistic" was the immediate requisitioning, without compensation, of all private clinics and diagnostic centres, as facilities for the treatment of both Covid and non-Covid patients. Secondly, the immediate and without other conditions hiring of all the specialised doctors and interim doctors and finally, the integration of all the self-employed doctors in a state plan for the strengthening of primary healthcare for all patients.