ATHENS – It is imperative to convince as many people as possible to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, government spokesperson Yiannis Oikonomou told SKAI TV on Saturday.

“There is a battle underway in the country’s national health system right now,” he added, with doctors and health workers in the frontline, while the government is using every means in its disposal to strengthen the country’s NHS.

In collaboration with doctors’ associations, the health ministry is also trying to convince doctors in the private sector to take advantage of available incentives and help the NHS cover the needs that have arisen in the spiking pandemic, Oikonomou noted.

However, “if we cannot meet current medical requirements, the requisition of private sector doctors will be put into effect as early as of Monday,” he pointed out, “particularly in northern Greece, where the NHS is heavily burdened.”

Oikonomou ruled out the possibility of a general lockdown, and he said that “society will stay open in the line of measures aimed mainly at unvaccinated people.”

With the Christmas and New Year festive season only a month and a half away, he said, “the major thing is for everyone -and especially our unvaccinated fellow citizens- to understand that the safest way to celebrate with their family and friends is to hurry to get vaccinated. In other words, there is no way to relax what [measures] we have established for the unvaccinated.”