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The Bright Side Of Covid-19: Seven Opportunities Of The Current Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has a lot of dark sides. Around the world, people get ill and die, schools close, the healthcare system is overloaded, employees lose their jobs, companies face bankruptcy, stock markets collapse and countries have to spend billions on bailouts and medical aid. And for everyone, whether directly hurt or not, Covid-19 is a huge stressor shaking up our psyche, triggering our fears and uncertainties.

No matter how serious and sad all of this is, there are upsides as well. Therefore, along the Monty Python song “Always look on the bright side of life” let’s not forget those and make the best of what the crisis gives us. As the good old SWOT analysis tells us, there are not only threats, but also opportunities. With opportunities I don’t mean that the crisis provides extra business for companies like Zoom and Go to Webinar that enable virtual meetings, or for Amazon, which is planning to hire another 100,000 employees. The latter is probably more a threat than an opportunity for most, especially for the mom & pop stores that go through difficult times already.

With opportunities I mean general opportunities that are available for most people affected by the crisis. The current crisis offers at least seven of them:

Opportunity 1: More time

In today’s overheated economy time is often seen as the most valuable and sparse thing we have. Covid-19 shows why: because we have stacked our week with social gatherings and entertainment such as going to the theater, birthdays, cinema, restaurant, bar, sportclub, gym, music, festivals, concerts and what is more. Suddenly, all of that is cancelled or forbidden, giving us significant amounts of extra time. And still, live goes on. This shows us how easy it is to clear our calendars. Obviously this doesn’t apply to the health-care sector and other crucial sectors, but beyond those it applies to a large majority of sectors.

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The opportunity is that we can spend this time on other things—or even better, on nothing and enjoy the free time. Looking at the crowded parks, waste collection points, garden centres and DIY stores in the last week, many people seem to have a hard time with the latter. Instead of enjoying the extra free time, they fill it immediately with other activities. To seize this first opportunity though, re-arranging how you spend your time and reserving time for nothingness is key. Not just during the crisis, but also after it. The advices in my previous article on the Covid-19 crisis could help in realizing this.

Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider

The fact that the coronavirus disrupts our day-t0-day lives provides an opportunity to reflect on things and to reconsider what we do, how we do it and why we do it. Things we took for granted—like going to the gym—are suddenly not possible anymore. Furthermore, many people have had to change their mode of working and work from home instead of at the office. This means that a lot of our routines are interrupted. MORE FOR YOUWhy KPIs Don’t Work; And How To Fix Them How Cisco Takes Care Of Its Employees What Business Leaders Can Learn From The Special Forces

This offers a great opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes. Now that you haven’t been able to go to the restaurant twice a week, commute 2 hours per day, hang out with your friends or go to a party every weekend, you can reflect on whether you really want to continue doing so after the crisis. The virus forces you to make changes to your daily life that you might actually want to keep also after the crisis.

Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation

Many organizations suffer from slow procedures, complex bureaucracies and rigid hierarchies making organizational life less than pleasant. The coronavirus has forced many of them to break through these rigid systems and act instantly. Suddenly procedures can be skipped or accelerated, rules can be side-tracked and decisions can be made more autonomously without formal approval. And suddenly employees are allowed to work from home without direct supervision.

Covid-19 shows that, as soon as there is a strong enough stimulus, things can change. This leads to remarkable innovations. Not being allowed to open their doors, restaurants, for example, are shifting to delivery mode. And schools suddenly do much of the teaching and even some of the testing online. This brings the opportunity to create innovations now that can be maintained after the crisis. And it also can help to keep the current speed and innovation mode afterwards.

Opportunity 4: Better meetings

As referred to in an earlier article, people spend up to 23 hours per week in meetings, half of which are considered a failure or waste of time. The current crisis has forced us to rethink how we deal with meetings. Because in many countries it is not allowed anymore to meet with a group of persons, many meetings are cancelled. And when they still take place they are mostly virtual and shorter.

As such, it provides an excellent opportunity for resolving one of the most disliked parts of organizational life. The technology for this is already present and mature for a couple of years, but the coronavirus triggers a sudden need for it. The real opportunity here is to make systematic changes so that meetings will be more effective, also after the crisis.

Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help

Challenging times offer a great opportunity for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. Of course, not being able to visit friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases. But the feeling of “we’re in this together” has also triggered interesting ways of connecting. Some of those have gone viral—such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies—but there are many small, local initiatives too to connect and help people who need it.

In the individualized societies many of us live in, this provides opportunities to reconnect and create more social coherence. Not only during the crisis, but also afterwards. This opportunity comes with a big caveat though. Parallel to these nice initiatives we also witness how far people go to protect themselves and their families. People hoard food, medicine, toilet paper and guns without thinking a second of others. However, while it triggers self-serving egocentric behavior too, the Covid-19 crisis does provide us the opportunity to reconnect and show our social side.

Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment

The virus caused a shutdown or dramatical decrease of industrial activities. Factories are closed or operate far below their capacity, road traffic has reduced radically and air traffic collapsed, and the lack of tourism has emptied the streets in overcrowded cities like Venice, Amsterdam and New York. While this may be bad news for most people and especially those working in the affected industries, this is also good news for our planet. Covid-19 causes a significant reduction in green house gasses and other air, water and land polluting outputs. In Venice this has allegedly led to dolphins return after just a couple of weeks (although some argued this to be a hoax).

Whether the particular example is a hoax or not is not so relevant. The fact is that the shutdown and lockdown of large parts of our economy is good for nature—at least on the short term. The opportunity this provides, is to keep parts of this in place also after the crisis to make long-term improvements. Along the line of the previous opportunities, the current crisis provides us an opportunity to reconsider our lives and reorganize it in a way that has less impact on our planet.

Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance

The final opportunity that the Covid-19 crisis offers, is a chance to create awareness for the moderate role we play on this planet and accept that things cannot always go as we want them to go. The Covid-19 pandemic is a global crisis chat is unprecedented in modern peace time. We had other pandemics like SARS, but their impact was less substantial. And we had the 1973 oil crisis, but that was a man-made crisis. The coronavirus is not man-made and yet disrupts lives across the planet.

As such, the virus shows us that, no matter how well-planned and organized we are and no matter how much we live in the Anthropocene—the era characterized by significant human impact—we are not in control. One simple virus is disrupting everything. This offers a great opportunity. In almost every aspect of life we want to be in control. Whether it is health, airline safety or our calendars, we live in the illusion that full control is possible. The virus can help us create awareness that this is not the case. It provides an opportunity to take a more modest role and accept that many things are simply beyond our control.

Once again, the Covid-19 crisis has a large dark side. But as these seven opportunities show, it has positive sides as well. Since all seven opportunities require a quite fundamental change in how we approach the world, seizing them can take substantial time. In that sense, and if we keep on looking at the brighter sides of life, the longer the crisis lasts, the larger the opportunities are and the bigger the chances are of actually making changes to our deeply rooted habits and convictions. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Jeroen Kraaijenbrink

I help companies do strategy through training, mentoring and consulting. My drive is to bring you and your organization to the next level with strategy approaches that work. I wrote “Strategy Consulting,” “Nor More Bananas,” and “The Strategy Handbook.” Reach out to me via jeroenkraaijenbrink.com, LinkedIn or jk@kraaijenbrink.com

Pat Flynn 282K subscribers 26 million Americans are without a job right now, and that’s just in the U.S. alone. It’s a terrible situation, one that I’m all too familiar with myself having gotten laid off during the recession in 2008. These are tough times, but there are opportunities within them, too. I was able to build a business back in 2008 as a result of getting laid off, and I imagine that those who focus on the future, and the ability to create something new now, are the ones who are going to come out of this dire situation best.

3 New York Children Die From Syndrome Possibly Linked to COVID-19

NEW YORK — Three children have now died in New York state from a possible complication from the coronavirus involving swollen blood vessels and heart problems, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday.

At least 73 children in New York have been diagnosed with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease — a rare inflammatory condition in children — and toxic shock syndrome. Most of them are toddlers and elementary-age children.

Cuomo announced two more deaths a day after discussing the death of a 5-year-old boy Thursday at a New York City hospital. He did not give information about where the two other children died, or provide their ages.

There is no proof that the virus causes the syndrome. Cuomo said the children had tested positive for COVID-19 or the antibodies but did not show the common symptoms of the virus when they were hospitalized.

“This is the last thing that we need at this time, with all that is going on, with all the anxiety we have, now for parents to have to worry about whether or not their youngster was infected,” Cuomo said at his daily briefing.

New York is helping develop national criteria for identifying and responding to the syndrome at the request of the Centers for Disease Control, Cuomo said.

Children elsewhere in the U.S. have also been hospitalized with the condition, which was also seen in Europe.

At least 3,000 U.S. children are diagnosed with Kawasaki disease each year. It is most common in children younger than 6 and in boys.

Symptoms include prolonged fever, severe abdominal pain and trouble breathing.

SHELTER BUSES

New York City transit officials said they’re providing buses for homeless people to shelter from unseasonably frigid weather this weekend during newly instituted overnight subway closures.

The subway system has been shutting down from 1 to 5 a.m. since Wednesday as part of an outbreak-related plan for daily train disinfecting. City outreach workers have been persuading homeless people to leave the system for shelters during the shutdowns.

With temperatures around the freezing mark and a traces of snow reported in Manhattan’s Central Park, transit officials said they also would provide a limited number of buses at end-of-line stations Saturday and Sunday.

The buses are not for transportation, “but may serve as a place for individuals to escape the elements in the short term,” according to a prepared statement from New York City Transit President Sarah Feinberg and Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utano.

Skin Conditions like “COVID Toes” May Be Signs of Coronavirus

Dermatologists around the world are gathering data on what may be largely overlooked symptoms of COVID-19: skin conditions ranging from rashes to “pseudo-frostbite.”

Many viral illnesses—including chickenpox, measles and mononucleosis—are accompanied by telltale skin rashes, often a result of the body’s heightened inflammatory response while fighting off infection. Though more research is needed, a growing number of case reports and preliminary studies suggest SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can also affect the skin.

In late March, an Italian physician submitted a letter to the editor of the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, describing skin conditions that affected about 20% of 88 COVID-19 patients analyzed in the Lombardy region of Italy. Most of them developed a red rash on their torsos, while a few suffered hives or blisters resembling chickenpox.

Then, in early April, a dermatology organization representing more than 400 French dermatologists issued a statement noting that among probable COVID-19 patients they had seen skin symptoms including hives, red rashes and frostbite-like lesions on the extremities. And finally, in mid-April, in a letter to the editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, a group of Italian physicians described a chickenpox-like rash as “a rare but specific COVID-19-associated skin manifestation.”

In the U.S., the “pseudo-frostbite” condition described by French dermatologists in their statement has been nicknamed “COVID toes.” More than 100 cases of the condition—characterized by purple, bruise-like bumps and swelling— have been recorded in a COVID-19 symptom registry kept by the American Academy of Dermatology.

Dr. Alisa Femia, director of inpatient dermatology and a specialist in autoimmune connective tissue disease at NYU Langone, says she’s seen all of the above conditions among suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients in New York City, and finds the range of possible symptoms remarkable.

“For a virus to do all of these things that it’s doing within the first five months of existing in humans is pretty striking to me,” she says.

Patients who end up hospitalized often develop a pink, itchy rash across their torso and limbs, she says. Others develop hives or, less commonly, a chickenpox-like rash. It can be tricky to determine whether skin conditions like these are actually caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus or are a side effect of medications used to treat it, but Femia says the rashes are popping up often enough that they are probably manifestations of the virus itself.

Femia also says she’s seeing “COVID toes” fairly frequently these days, often among people with few other symptoms of COVID-19 calling for telemedicine consults from home—but, despite the nickname, she says it’s not entirely clear that COVID-19 is causing the issue. Many people with the condition have not gotten tested for COVID-19 since they are not sick enough to require intensive medical attention, making it impossible to say for sure whether their ailment is related to the virus.

Others have tested negative for the virus, but have no other clear reason for a skin abnormality. Fermia guesses that some patients who were asymptomatic or had very mild cases of COVID-19 developed “COVID toes” late enough in their illness for tests to come back negative, but says at this point a lot remains unknown.

CDC: Here Are 6 New Possible Symptoms Of COVID-19 Coronavirus

It was only a matter of time before the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) added to this list. For a while, the “Symptoms of Coronavirus” list on their Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) website stayed at three symptoms: fever, cough, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing. Not anymore. The CDC has now added six more to bring the total to nine.

The six new additions are:

Chills
Repeated shaking with chills
Muscle pain
Headache
Sore throat
New loss of taste or smell

So if you have any of the nine listed symptoms, you may have a COVID-19 coronavirus infection. Or you may not. Unless you do. Such symptoms could be due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), except when they aren’t and something else is causing them. Got it?

Is all of this giving you a headache? Or is your headache from COVID-19? Probably not, if it just started from looking at the list. But if it continues, then maybe.

At least, if you have another diagnosis like an influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), or some other respiratory virus infection that can cause some of the above symptoms, you can be rest assured that you don’t have a COVID-19 coronavirus infection. Except when you have both types of infections at the same time.

A research letter published in JAMA revealed that 20.7% of specimens that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 also tested positive for one or more other pathogens as well. For the study, David Kim, MD, PhD, James Quinn, MD, MS, Benjamin Pinsky, MD, PhD, Nigam H. Shah, MBBS, PhD, and Ian Brown, MD, MS, from the Stanford University School of Medicine reviewed result from 1217 specimens from 1206 patients who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory pathogens with 116 (9.5%) of these turning out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2. Of the 24 specimens that had SARS-CoV2 and at least one other respiratory pathogen, 6.9% tested positive for rhinovirus/enterovirus, 5.2% for respiratory syncytial virus (5.2%), 4.3% for other coronaviruses besides the SARS-CoV-2, and a little over 3% for some type of influenza. So if you have another respiratory virus infection, you could still have COVID-19. In the words of Bill Lumbergh from the movie Office Space, “that’ll be great.”

How’s that for freaking confusing? As more and more reports emerge of people having different groups of symptoms, it has become increasingly clear that fever, cough, and respiratory symptoms are not the only things that you should be looking for if you are worried about COVID-19. It’s also becoming increasingly clear that the course of COVID-19 can be very variable and reminiscent of that Michael Scott quote from the television show The Office: “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.” Your course of symptoms, of course, may make sense, except when it doesn’t.

The CDC list is far from exhaustive. What symptoms you get can seem like a game of craps, in more ways than one. For example, Robert Glatter has written for Forbes about how stomach ache and diarrhea could be the first signs of COVID-19. I have covered for Forbes some of the eye symptoms that may be present. Then, there’s the letter to the Journal of The European Academy of Dermatology and Venerealogy that reported on two patients with COVID-19 who initially had only fever and urticaria, which is medical-speak for hives.

It would certainly be a lot easier if COVID-19 had a clear classic symptom like the measles (a rash), the chicken pox (vesicles, which are fluid-filled little sacs on your skin), or foreign accent syndrome (take a wild guess). But the lack of such a clear symptom means that making COVID-19 coronavirus testing much more widely available is all the more important. The CDC does provide an online Coronavirus Self-Checker to help you determine whether you should contact your doctor. However, this is not a way to diagnose COVID-19. Neither is an app nor asking other people on Facebook. The only way to really diagnose COVID-19 is to get the cotton swab up the nose and to the back of your throat test to check the gunk for the RNA of the virus.

So far, other things on the CDC Symptoms of Coronavirus website haven’t really changed. It still indicates that you may begin experience symptoms two to 14 days after being exposed to the virus. And the list of emergency warning signs still includes trouble breathing, persistent pain or pressure in the chest, new confusion or inability to arouse, and bluish lips or face. If you have any of these symptoms, you may have severe COVID-19 that requires immediate medical attention. Unless of course, something else is causing these symptoms and you don’t have COVID-19. Either way get real medical attention as soon as possible.

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Bruce Y. Lee

I am a writer, journalist, professor, systems modeler, computational and digital health expert, avocado-eater, and entrepreneur, not always in that order. Currently, I am a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health, Executive Director of PHICOR (@PHICORteam), Professor By Courtesy at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, and founder and CEO of Symsilico. My previous positions include serving as Executive Director of the Global Obesity Prevention Center (GOPC) at Johns Hopkins University, Associate Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pittsburgh, and Senior Manager at Quintiles Transnational, working in biotechnology equity research at Montgomery Securities, and co-founding a biotechnology/bioinformatics company. My work has included developing computational approaches, models, and tools to help health and healthcare decision makers in all continents (except for Antarctica) and has been supported by a wide variety of sponsors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIH, AHRQ, CDC, UNICEF, USAID and the Global Fund. I have authored over 200 scientific publications and three books. Follow me on Twitter (@bruce_y_lee) but don’t ask me if I know martial arts.

Source: CDC: Here Are 6 New Possible Symptoms Of COVID-19 Coronavirus

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Watch the Osmosis Video here: https://osms.it/covid-19 What is COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19)? The coronaviruses that circulate among humans are typically benign, and they cause about a quarter of all common cold illnesses. But occasionally, coronaviruses, like COVID-19, circulate in an animal reservoir and mutate just enough to where they’re able to start infecting and causing disease in humans. Find our complete video library only on Osmosis Prime: http://osms.it/more. Hundreds of thousands of current & future clinicians learn by Osmosis. We have unparalleled tools and materials to prepare you to succeed in school, on board exams, and as a future clinician. Sign up for a free trial at http://osms.it/more. Subscribe to our Youtube channel at http://osms.it/subscribe. Get early access to our upcoming video releases, practice questions, giveaways, and more when you follow us on social media: Facebook: http://osms.it/facebook Twitter: http://osms.it/twitter Instagram: http://osms.it/instagram Our Vision: Everyone who cares for someone will learn by Osmosis. Our Mission: To empower the world’s clinicians and caregivers with the best learning experience possible. Learn more here: http://osms.it/mission Medical disclaimer: Knowledge Diffusion Inc (DBA Osmosis) does not provide medical advice. Osmosis and the content available on Osmosis’s properties (Osmosis.org, YouTube, and other channels) do not provide a diagnosis or other recommendation for treatment and are not a substitute for the professional judgment of a healthcare professional in diagnosis and treatment of any person or animal. The determination of the need for medical services and the types of healthcare to be provided to a patient are decisions that should be made only by a physician or other licensed health care provider. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition.

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How Greece Avoided the Worst of the Coronavirus Pandemic

This weekend’s Orthodox Easter celebrations in Greece were a low key affair for Michalis Stratakis and his wife Nancy. They still ate lamb, but the meat was oven-cooked instead of carved off a whole animal that had been spit-roasted for hours over charcoals. They painted eggs red according to Greek tradition and played games with family members in Athens, but over cell phone screens from their home on the Greek island of Crete on Sunday, rather than at the usual raucous feast of about 20 friends and relatives.

“It was heartbreaking, to tell you the truth, because we didn’t have the feeling of family,” says 44-year-old Stratakis, an accountant. “We spoke to them through the camera, but it’s not the same when you can’t hug your parents and your sisters and your friends.”

Still, Stratakis is aware that the pared-down Easter celebrations were a necessary sacrifice to protect elderly relatives and his country, too. Greeks traditionally depart urban centers for the countryside and islands in advance of the Orthodox calendar’s most sacred date. But this year, authorities monitored churches, enlisted street patrols, and deployed drones to enforce strict bans on movement amid a plethora of other measures taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Experts say that both the stringency of those measures, and the way Greeks have largely abided by them, have been key to Greece avoiding the worst ravages of the global pandemic.

How Greece is coping

The coronavirus outbreak in Greece should have been a disaster. As a popular tourist destination, Greece received 27.2 million visitors in 2019 alone—presenting a potentially significant risk of COVID-19 from international travelers. The country’s population is the second-oldest in the E.U. (behind only Italy), its health sector has been ravaged by austerity, and its crippled economy is still nearly 40% smaller than it was in 2008, before the last global financial crisis. Officials said in 2019 that, after three bailouts and drastic cuts to its public healthcare system due to austerity, there were only 560 ICU beds in the entire country of 11 million. (That’s 5.2 beds per 100,000 people, compared to Germany’s 29.2.)

And to make matters worse, the Greek Orthodox Church announced on March 9 that coronavirus could not be transmitted by communion wine or wafer — a doctrine that was immediately disputed by health experts. (The Greek Church’s governing Holy Synod subsequently said that Easter would be marked “on a small scale behind closed doors”, according to the Church Times.)

What Greece did right

The key to Greece’s success, analysts say, was the government’s early steps to contain the virus ahead of most of Europe. In late February, before a single death from the disease had been recorded, carnivals were canceled. Schools and universities nationwide were closed on March 10, when there were just 89 confirmed cases in the country. Cafes, restaurants and tourist spots were closed three days later.

The Greek government moved quickly not despite its crippled public healthcare system, but because of it, experts say. “I don’t think it was a very difficult decision, because of knowledge that the health system wouldn’t be able to cope,” says Dr. Stella Ladi, a former public policy adviser to the Greek government and currently an assistant professor in public management at Panteion University in Athens and Queen Mary, University of London.

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U.S. Health Care Workers Are Dangerously Ill-Equipped to Fight COVID-19

“We are out of everything.”

When the government banned all non-essential travel starting from March 23, it was with one eye to the situation in Italy, where hospital ICUs were overwhelmed and people with the disease were lying untreated in hallways. Officials knew it would take a far smaller outbreak for the same scenes to repeat themselves in Athens. “In Italy unfortunately, one person is lost every two minutes,” said Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announcing the lockdown on March 22. “We have to protect the common good, our health.” At the time, there were 624 confirmed cases and 15 deaths in Greece. By comparison, when the U.K. announced its own lockdown the same day, it had 6,650 confirmed cases and at least 335 deaths.

The government also began daily television broadcasts about the situation, warning citizens that the weak healthcare system meant harsh measures had to be implemented early in order to save lives, even if the economy was hit hard. “The communications strategy was equally important as the early measures,” Ladi says. “Every day at 6 p.m., people stop doing whatever they’re doing to see what the developments are,” says Panos Tsakloglou, a Professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business.

The lockdown measures have been greeted with widespread support for the same reasons, experts say. “The public knew the healthcare system was not going to work, so they accepted it,” Ladi says of the early lockdown.

The importance of good health in Greek culture, Ladi says, is another reason for Greeks’ easy acceptance of the lockdown. “From a cultural perspective, every discussion, every wish for the future, always ends with a word for good health,” she tells TIME. “It’s not debatable whether health is more important than keeping your shop open. Health is more important and the shop comes second. It was not a contested issue like in other places.”

The government also used the lockdown to increase healthcare capacity, growing the number of ICU beds from 565 in early March to 910 at the end of the month. And an agreement between the Greek government and private hospitals means they have begun taking on patients with non-coronavirus-related ailments, freeing up space for COVID-19 patients in public hospitals.

Migrant camps

A woman helps a child with a mask after members of NGO “Team Humanity” gave out handmade protective face masks to migrants and refugees in the camp of Moria in the island of Lesbos on March 28, 2020.

Manolis Lagoutaris/AFP via Getty Images)

But just like everywhere else, the virus and the lockdown are colliding with longstanding inequalities. That means that even as Greece performs well compared to other countries, many of its inhabitants are more at risk than others.

That’s especially true when it comes to the five refugee camps on the Greek islands, where around 40,000 people are held in legal limbo in squalid conditions. In the most overcrowded camp on the island of Lesvos, which is served by just three doctors, more than 18,000 people are crowded into less than a tenth of a square kilometer, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Many live under sheets of tarpaulin or in makeshift huts in the camp, which was originally designed to hold less than 3,000 people. The population density there is six to eight times higher than the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the virus spread even faster than it did in Wuhan at the peak of China’s outbreak, according to the IRC.

So far, there are no cases of COVID-19 in the most overcrowded camps on the Greek islands. But two camps on the mainland have been put under quarantine after 44 cases were confirmed among migrants being held there, according to Apostolos Veizis, the director of medical programs at Medecins Sans Frontieres in Greece. And on Tuesday, 148 people were reportedly diagnosed with COVID-19 at a hotel holding refugees southwest of Athens. “When we talk about social distancing, it is something that cannot be applied in this reality,” Veizis tells TIME. “I can guarantee you if a case were to happen tomorrow in Moria [the camp on Lesvos], it would not be easy to manage.”

On April 16, the Greek government said it would relocate 2,380 people (the most elderly migrants and those with preexisting health conditions, along with their families) away from the Greek islands to camps on the mainland. But it also announced on Monday that nationwide restrictions on the movement of migrants would continue until May 10 — 13 days longer than the rest of the country. “Such restrictions put people trapped in the camps more at risk,” Veizis says. “Forcing people to live in overcrowded and unhygienic camps as part of Europe’s containment policy was always irresponsible but now more than ever due to the COVID-19 threat.”

Economic toll

Despite managing to keep its overall case count and death toll low so far, the coronavirus crisis is shaping up to have dire effects on Greece’s already struggling economy. “Greece’s output relies quite extensively on sectors that are particularly hard hit by the crisis,” like international shipping and tourism, says Tsakloglou, the economics professor. Tourism directly made up 11.7% of GDP in 2018, and as much as 30.9% when indirect income is included.

And while the government has brought in stimulus measures to shore up businesses during the lockdown, the country’s high debt to GDP ratio means it might be difficult for the country to continue borrowing if the crisis stretches into months or years. “As a result the fiscal measures that are available are relatively limited,” Tsakloglou says. Still, he says the likelihood of Greece needing yet another bailout remains low.

It will be lower still if Greeks continue to abide by government restrictions. After the Easter weekend, Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias acknowledged the difficulty of remaining under lockdown and said the government would begin to ease restrictions bit by bit at the beginning of May. Hardalias also thanked citizens for “the very high level of collective responsibility” they showed over the holiday.

For Stratakis in Crete, the sense of responsibility is keenly felt. Although people do not like following government orders, he says, close family ties and respect for the elderly are emphasised in Greek society. “Nobody would forgive themselves if they had the virus and they gave it to their parents,“ he tells TIME. “We couldn’t imagine not celebrating Easter with our relatives next year because they got the virus and left this world.”

Please send tips, leads, and stories from the frontlines to virus@time.com.

Correction: April 22

The original version of this story misstated the dates on which Greek schools and universities were closed, and cafes and other businesses shuttered. Greek schools and universities were ordered closed nationwide March 10; cafes and other businesses were allowed to stay open until March 13.

By Billy Perrigo and Joseph Hincks Updated: April 22, 2020 7:16 AM EDT | Originally published: April 21, 2020 12:15 PM EDT

Source: How Greece Avoided the Worst of the Coronavirus Pandemic

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The island of Santorini is a beloved destination for many Chinese tourists. But since the new COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in China, scores are simply not showing up.… READ MORE : https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/12/g… Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/euronews?su… Watch our LIVE here: https://www.youtube.com/c/euronews/live #coronavirus #coronavirusGreece

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The Bright Side Of Covid-19: Seven Opportunities Of The Current Pandemic

Opportunity 1: More time

Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider

Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation

Opportunity 4: Better meetings

Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help

Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment

Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance

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3 New York Children Die From Syndrome Possibly Linked to COVID-19

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How Greece Avoided the Worst of the Coronavirus Pandemic

How Greece is coping

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What Greece did right

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Opportunity 1: More time

Opportunity 2: Reflect and reconsider

Opportunity 3: Speed and innovation

Opportunity 4: Better meetings

Opportunity 5: Reconnect and help

Opportunity 6: Cleaner environment

Opportunity 7: Modesty and acceptance

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How Greece is coping

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What Greece did right

Migrant camps

Economic toll

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