Editorial: Public health crisis

The rapid pace at which cases of COVID-19 are spreading in Greece is testing the endurance of both the health system and society.

The National Health System and related infrastructure must exhibit the state of readiness and competence for which they have been preparing in the last weeks.

Society must act with the maturity and responsibility that it owes to itself.

The success of the health system is linked to the success of society.

The health system will not make it through if society reacts without the necessary endurance.

Composure must not give way to panic and recklessness must not undermine the requisite sense of individual responsibility, which entails assiduously tending to personal hygiene and religiously enforcing the guidelines of the competent health system authorities.

Just as civil servants must exhaust all the means at their disposal to rise to the occasion, it is inconceivable to permit a repeat of the recent actions of revelers who defied a state-imposed ban on holding carnivals.

Greece is now confronted with a public health crisis.

It has become abundantly clear from other recent crises that one cannot manage an emergency without cooperation, maturity, and compliance with the rules and regulations.