ΑΤΗΕΝS — The government is repeating the mistakes it made last year with the opening of schools in the midst of the fourth wave of the pandemic, main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance spokesperson Nasos Iliopoulos said on the radio station ZarpaRadio 89.6 in Chania on Friday.

"For yet another year, schools are opening with up to 25 to 27 children per class, at a time when we have a variant of the virus, the Delta variant, that scientists say is equally virulent for children," Iliopoulos said. He said that the government should break up large classes and, if this was not possible, resort to morning and afternoon shifts in schools.

He also criticised the decision that classes will only stop if the number of confirmed Covid cases is over half the class as "criminal", noting that this protocol deeply worried scientists, who warn it could lead to 100-150 cases in the community for every such class.

Iliopoulos said the government had clearly failed to meet vaccination targets, saying that this was largely due to delays in setting up mobile vaccination units to reach people with mobility issues.

The spokesperson criticised the running of the national health system, noting that it had become a Covid-only system in which people needing urgent care for other complaints were unable to get treatment, so that they were forced to go privately. He noted that, according to the official figures, there were now fewer permanent staff in public healthcare than there were before the pandemic.

He said that SYRIZA was not going to demand elections at this difficult time, as the priority was to protect human life, but will continue to put pressure on the government to improve the public health system, win the fight against the pandemic and ensure the economic survival of the majority of society, which was now yet again facing a difficult economic situation with high prices, stagnant wages and accumulating debts.