The letter from Christine Fuchs (22 April) on the contrast between Germany’s and the UK’s response to Covid-19 is timely. However, Greece, among the poorest of EU members, has spectacularly outperformed both Germany and the UK in its handling of the crisis. To date, Greece has recorded 2,517 coronavirus cases and 134 deaths (see worldometers.info) from a population of slightly under 11 million.
This has been achieved by a strategy of a rapid and comprehensive response, and the government’s willingness to fully accept the recommendations of its scientific advisers. By early March all schools, as well as anywhere where people might gather in numbers, were closed and social distancing was strictly enforced. All this from a country ravaged by years of austerity.
Even the city government in Athens has used the absence of traffic on normally congested streets to embark on a massive programme of road repairs, thus taking the opportunity to invest in infrastructure in readiness for a post-coronavirus world.
Meanwhile the UK, one of the 10 top largest economies in the world, currently has the fastest growing death rate from the virus in Europe and no plans for the future.
Peter Holliday
Wallingford, Oxfordshire
