ATHENS – Main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance spokesperson Nassos Iliopoulos on Thursday accused Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of refusing to face reality and rejecting science in the government’s handling of the pandemic.

“Stating that there is no data which shows that the mortality rate outside an ICU is higher than that within an ICU, the prime minister abolished ICU care and told us that intensive care units are useless,” Iliopoulos said in an interview with Kriti TV.

“In November, we mourned 2,217 of our fellow citizens and the government refuses to answer how many of these deaths happened outside of an ICU, while at the moment more than 150 people who are not in an ICU are intubated,” Iliopoulos said.

He accused the prime minister of “giving up in the struggle against the pandemic, resulting in the tragedy of human losses and a catastrophic lockdown that is coming closer.” According to Iliopoulos, “none of the measures [the prime minister] announced concern the present moment,” and he added that “even if, in some magical way, everyone was vaccinated, we would continue to have a difficult two-month period ahead of us until we build a collective wall of immunity.”

He described the measure of compulsory vaccination as an “admission of failure” on the part of the government and argued that immediate measures were needed, such as the requisitioning of private clinics so that no patients were left outside an ICU, and an abolition of school mergers.