The relevant health ministry on Thursday issued a same-day ultimatum – which expired at 9 p.m. local time – to private clinics in the Thessaloniki area to immediately make available 200 beds for coronavirus cases, given that the number of intubated patients suffering from the virus throughout Greece reached 499.
Otherwise, the ministry’s leadership said, the facilities will be requisitioned.
The development, unprecedented in post-WWII Greece, comes as the “second wave” of the pandemic is particularly acute in northern Greece.
Up until Thursday afternoon, members of the national association of private clinics had refused the order.
