News in brief

Greece’s Health Ministry has announced that there have been 5 new fatalities from the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, raising the total to 73, 52 of them men. The average age of the victims is 74.
There were also 62 new confirmed cases, with the total now at 1,735.
There are 93 people, 72 men and 21 women, in intensive care units.
The Health Ministry added that 25,453 tests for the disease have been administered.

The Greek government has announced stricter quarantine measures for the islands of Mykonos and Santorini.
Residents of Mykonos will not be allowed to leave their homes to exercise, individually or in pairs, as in the rest of Greece. They will only be allowed to walk their dog, for 15 minutes, and only on the block around their home. There are also stricter than usual crowd control measures in supermarkets.
On the island of Santorini, all construction activities are suspended.
The above measures will be imposed Monday morning and will last 14 days.

«Measures to tackle the crisis will be more than doubled in May, also covering the next period,» Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said on Sunday in a statement to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA).
The Greek government has a total of 37 billion euros available to support the economy, in addition to European measures, to deal with the recession caused by the health crisis, which is estimated at around 4 pct of GDP, according to Christos Staikouras.

The Eurogroup, which will hold a video conference meeting on Tuesday, April 7, will seek a compromise on the European package of measures to address the major economic impact of the coronavirus.
Following Germany and the Netherlands’ rejection of the proposal of nine eurozone countries, including Greece, to issue a corona-bond, the Eurogroup will seek a compromise though the increase in EU funding from existing institutions – the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Japan is expected to declare a state of emergency that may go into effect as early as Tuesday. Under a law revised in March to cover the coronavirus, the prime minister can declare a state of emergency if the disease poses a “grave danger” to lives and if its rapid spread could have a huge impact on the economy.

Donald Trump said the US government had ordered 29m doses of hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria for which testing for its use to treat coronavirus is still under way. The drug has potentially harmful side-effects. Personal protective gear is also being airlifted to US affected states, including millions of masks, gloves, and sterile gowns.
UK prime minister Boris Johnson was admitted to hospital for tests after showing persistent symptoms of coronavirus 10 days after announcing that he had tested positive for the virus. The pound fell against the dollar in response to the news.

Germany reported its fourth straight drop in daily cases. Germany’s confirmed coronavirus infections rose by 3,677 in the past 24 hours to 95,391 on Monday, the fourth straight drop in the daily rate of new cases, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases.

All e-learning courses for Greek students will be free of charge, as mobile phone providers will not charge their users. This was announced today by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Digital Governance.

Much of the prefecture of Magnisia as well as the island of Skopelos and the area of Pilio have been declared to be in a state of emergency following widespread damage wreaked by the bad weather over the weekend.

The country’s civil protection agency issued an announcement about the state of emergency on Sunday night following appeals lodged by regional authorities following significant damage caused by the heavy rainfall and stormy weather.
Skopelos was particularly badly hit in its western part by a storm that lasted around five hours with similar problems reported in Pilio on Sunday night where rainfall turned village roads into streams.

And the weather forecast…

Cloudy and rainy in Attica today, with snowfall expected on mt Parnitha and Kithaironas. Winds will be blowing from the north with their speed reaching 8 on the beaufort scale. The temperature in Athens will not exceed 12 degrees Celsius.