Greek authorities have not done enough to address the acute overcrowding and lack of health care, access to adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene products to limit the spread of Covid-19 in camps for asylum seekers, Human Rights Watch said today and urged Greece’s government to immediately take measures to protect those most at risk of Covid-19 in the island camps to avert a public health crisis.

“While the Greek government is working to stop the spread of the virus, the images of the squalid conditions in camps on the islands make clear that it’s not complying with minimum preventive and protective measures against Covid-19 there,” said Belkis Wille, senior Crisis and Conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Even handwashing and social distancing are impossible in these circumstances.”

As of April 20, 2020, 34,875 migrants and asylum seekers live in the camps on the Greek Aegean islands of Chios, Kos, Leros, Lesbos, and Samos – over 6 times their capacity.

2,401 Covid-19 cases and 121 deaths have been reported on mainland Greece as of April 20, and 11 cases in the local population on the islands, according to reports from the media. No cases have yet been identified in the island camps, known as Reception and Identification Centers. Yet as one aid worker put it, “it is very unlikely that Covid-19 will never come to Moria [the Lesbos camp]. The only solution, if we want to minimize casualties, is to decongest before it comes.”

HRW stressed that: “The authorities should urgently identify people in the camps at greater risk of serious illness and death from Covid-19, including older people and people with chronic diseases and serious underlying medical conditions, and other especially at-risk groups, as well as unaccompanied children, people with disabilities, pregnant women and women who have recently given birth.

They and their families should be safely transported to alternative and accessible accommodation such as hotels, apartments, and other housing units, where they should have access to food, water, sanitation, health care, and other basic necessities. These facilities should be spacious enough and equipped to make social distancing possible, and the authorities should provide information about how and why social distancing works.”

Soon after the first Covid-19 cases were reported in Greece, the government announced measures on March 17 to prevent an outbreak in the island camps. The measures included strict limits on leaving the camps other than for buying necessities, suspending activities including informal schools, and prohibiting access to visitors except those providing essential services. Authorities extended measures in the camps until May 10. On March 22, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a nationwide lockdown, restricting people’s movements beyond essential activities.

The 11 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, and Syria interviewed by HRW described extreme overcrowding in the camps and adjacent sites and extremely poor water and sanitation conditions. They said that there is no way to maintain social distancing while waiting in line – often for hours or even days – to get food, see a doctor, wash or use the toilet, or get permission to leave the site. Camp residents have no access to masks or gloves, except on Lesbos where volunteer seamstresses sewed cloth masks for residents. Interviewees said that testing for Covid-19 is not available in any of the camps as far as they know.

All said they regularly hear guidance from authorities and aid workers on measures they can take to protect themselves, but as a 63-year-old Syrian man living in the Samos camp said about social distancing, “I spend around 3 hours in line every day to get food.… If we are 200 people waiting for food, the camp is not even big enough for all of us to be able to wait and keep that distance between each other.”