ATHENS — "Trapped by its ideology, the Mitsotakis government is refusing to do anything to protect public health, society and support our economy," main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance spokesperson Nasos Iliopoulos said on the Star television evening news programme on Thursday night.

"The government is not investing in the national health system, nor is it supporting workers and businesses," he added, while accusing ruling New Democracy of "brazenly handing out gifts to the private sector," in the midst of what the prime minister himself had described as a "war" being waged against the pandemic.

"Instead of requisitioning private ICUs, especially in northern Greece where the situation is 'in the red zone', it is doubling hospital stay fees to 1,600 euros, while compensating clinic owners for all the beds in every private clinic, regardless of whether they are occupied by Covid-19 cases. In other words, the private health sector is requisitioning the public health sector, which has 6,000 fewer healthcare workers than last year," he noted.

Iliopoulos also accused Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of failing to abide by his government's own lockdown rules: "He is the first to violate all the measures and there is nothing 'human' ….in this. There is only a lack of empathy and arrogance, at a time when the public health system is at its limits and the healthcare personnel are on the verge of mental and physical collapse."