After opening its borders during the summer tourism season, Greece has just recorded its highest daily increase of Covid-19 cases since the start of the pandemic.
The European nation reported 5400 cases on Monday, which pushes its daily average to 3900 new infections.
The country also recorded 52 deaths from Covid-19, taking its pandemic death toll to 15,990 out of 747,595 cases.
Despite ballooning cases and rising deaths, a nationwide lockdown seems unlikely, reports Athens-based newspaper Kathimerini.
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Development Minister Adonis Georgiadis said the government wasn't looking at imposing a lockdown in winter, with the country shifting its Covid recovery plan to focusing on vaccinations.
"We are now dealing with the pandemic of the unvaccinated," he told local channel Skai TV. "Our national right to lock people up has disappeared."
Currently, 60.5 per cent of Greece's population is fully vaccinated - well behind the European average of 75 per cent.
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Just four weeks ago Greece's Health Miniser Thanos Plevris announced the removal of all indoor Covid-19 restrictions for fully vaccinated people. This meant business-as-usual activity was able to resume in restaurants, cafes, bars and nightclubs.
In order to encourage citizens to get the jab, unvaccinated public and private employees have been forced to pay for weekly tests in order to gain entry to their workplaces, as well as sports stadiums, museums, archaeological sites, cinemas and restaurants.
The government has also mandated vaccines for healthcare workers, prompting some to strike.
The sudden uptick in cases is a dire sign for Greece's already struggling economy. Just four years after the country emerged from a six-year depression between 2010 to 2016, it plunged into another recession in 2020.
Writing for Vox EU, Greece's former finance minister George Alogoskoufis predicted it would take years for Greece's economy to recover.
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Advertise with NZME."Greece appears to have experienced a very deep recession in 2020 and even under optimistic assumptions, a full recovery will take some time beyond 2021," he wrote.
"In addition, the recession and the cost of the measures to mitigate it have already led to a further sharp rise of Greece's already exorbitantly high public debt."
