At Zorkos beach, a packed strip of scorching sand on the northeastern part of Andros, vacationers lined up by a small wooden bar, their bathing suits still dripping. It was Orthodox Whit Monday, the end of a three-day weekend that traditionally marks the first island getaway for many Greeks.

For islands like Andros, that weekend in mid-June also gave a first glimpse of what this year’s summer would look like — and things seemed promising.

At the Zorkos bar, bartender Vassiliki Giannoulopoulou was already running out of various spirits and beer by the early afternoon. Happily, his guests didn’t mind switching to gin, of which he still had plenty.

“The ‘c’ word has not even been whispered,” says Giannoulopoulou, for whom it’s the fourth summer working at the beach bar. “The island is packed. I only see people eager to find their good old holiday habits.”

The picture held up even a few minutes’ drives inland. At one of the island’s best-known taverns, waiters serving dozens of tables of hungry holiday-makers had to turn away guests.

“Leave and come back another day to enjoy it. We’ve served more than 2,000 people today and we are about to have a wedding dinner,” an exhausted waiter told a group of young women.

Like the sunset, people flocked to the alleys in the chora, the island’s main town, to find a restaurant for dinner. Reservations are key — most tables are booked from early afternoon until midnight, and coronavirus rules require revelers to find a seat rather than crowd the bar. That, plus the masks are worn reluctantly by the waiters, remain the only reminders of the pandemic.

“It so beautiful, it’s like mid-August! Everyone is here,” said Katerina, a lawyer drinking her Aperol at the main square with a couple of friends visiting from Athens, her dog sleeping serenely on her lap.

Like many here at this time, she’s a local.

“This time of the year, foreigners were already here, now it’s just the Greeks,” said hotelier Aggelos Papaioannou. “They are fed up and want a way out. They used to book only the very last minute, but now they have already booked for August.”

Papaioannou hopes this summer will be better than the disastrous 2020 season. Last year, tourism revenue plunged to €4.28 billion from €18 billion in 2019. The number of tourists was down by 76.5 percent, according to the Greek Tourism Confederation Institute.

But while Greece’s coronavirus figures have sharply dropped since early June, now averaging around 420 cases a day in the last week, the more infectious so-called Delta variant and the restrictions on British travelers have given rise to fresh concerns for the country’s tourism season.

Greece’s tourism sector, which accounts for more than a fifth of its economic output and provides employment for about a quarter of the workforce, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council, officially rolled out its welcome mats on May 15. But so far interest from abroad has been limited, with hoteliers hoping for improvement in July and August.

“Many bookings that were done online from abroad have been canceled because of the uncertainty. Some 35 percent of our capacity is booked for July and August and we hope for the best,” said Papaioannou.

Lowered expectations

Businesses groups already believe that the initial target of reaching around 50 percent of the 2019 tourism revenue level is no longer realistic. The sector has lowered its estimates for this year’s revenues from €5.5 billion to €6 billion, having lowered it already from €8 billion at the beginning of the season.

“We can’t make any estimates because of the variants,” said Grigoris Tasios, president of the Greek Federation of Hoteliers and owner of a hotel in Halkidiki. “At the moment, the bookings on average do not exceed 35 percent” of hotel capacity. He added that hoteliers cannot go ahead with hiring staff as they don’t know how much personnel they will eventually need.

“The virus mutations have also mutated the markets,” he said. “British tourists, our main market, are still away, as we are on the U.K.’s ‘amber list,’ while the Germans and French are moving at a real slow pace. On the other hand, Greece has become a hot spot for American tourists.”

Demand from the U.S. for Greek holidays has skyrocketed unexpectedly this summer and major U.S. airlines have added more direct flights to Athens. The country was among the first EU members to reopen for American tourists — and Greece has also taken a more lax approach to other travelers.

During last week’s European Council summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Greece and other tourist-dependent countries for freely allowing in travelers who have been vaccinated with Russian and Chinese vaccines, which have not been approved by EU regulators.

In response, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis initially ruled out tightening restrictions, but on Sunday Greece announced that travelers from Russia would have to present a negative test whether or not they had been vaccinated.

“There is a big pressure to the government from Germany and countries which are not tourist-dependent and could very easily add more restrictions, as they are not footing the bill,” said Andreas Andreadis, CEO of the Sani/Ikos Group of luxury hotels and honorary president of the Greek Tourism Federation.

He urged the Greek government to stand firm, pointing to existing restrictions and claiming that there is no significant danger of tourists spreading the virus.

Tourism Minister Harry Theocharis has also repeatedly dismissed criticism that tourism was to blame for the country’s second wave last autumn. Greece opened for the tourism season last year with single- and double-digit case numbers, which multiplied during the summer. On Monday, around a fourth of new cases were from incoming travelers.

Betting on vaccines

Athens is hoping that accelerating its vaccination campaign will allow for a more carefree summer. But many employees in the tourism sector, many of whom are younger people, are reluctant to be vaccinated.

Some experts warn that only 55 percent to 58 percent of the population will end up getting fully vaccinated, much less than the target of 75 percent. Currently, about 37 percent are fully vaccinated, slightly above EU average. But Akis Skertsos, the deputy minister to the prime minister, said that based on the appointments booked, some 48 percent of the population and 57 percent of adults will be fully vaccinated at the end of July.

Greece has tried offering incentives such as phone data to young people to encourage them to get vaccinated. Andreadis said his group gives two paid days off for everyone that gets vaccinated.

“Young people under the age of 25 are still hesitant, as there is a broad false perception that the dangers outweigh the benefits,” he said.

Back in Andros, the long weekend buzz had left the island feeling optimistic — even if the mood was tinged with caution.

“We have opened our businesses and we are waiting,” said Dimitris Mendrinos, who owns a bar in the main square of the chora. “These first signals are good but there is still a lot of uncertainty.”

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“I thought August was the worst amid the second wave of the COVID-19 spread, but that is likely to be overshadowed by how I am doing over the next couple of weeks.”

He, like many of his peers in the same in-person services business, can no longer see the point of keeping his business open, since the only certainty is that there will be no customers for the foreseeable future.

“News reports are all about new infections soaring and people dying. Who would want to risk their lives to go eat out?”

The COVID-19 pandemic is tanking small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a repeated predicament set to take a drastic turn for the worse given social distancing regulations are likely to be raised to Level 3 with new infections topping 1,000 daily for the past few days.

Experts say one-off emergency relief of only a couple of thousands of won will do little to help their businesses stay afloat, stressing that extending a steady line of financing would be a far more effective option for the group of low-income earners that take the first hit from the pandemic.

Data from Korea Credit Data, a financial market services provider, submitted to Rep. Lee Dong-ju of the Democratic Party of Korea (DKP), showed sales at SMES began a downtrend in mid-November, quickly negating a months-long uptrend that barely allowed them to recover from the months leading up to October when the second wave of the virus spread began to subside.

Of the hardest hit industries, entertainment facilities saw their sales plunge to 24 percent of their normal income in the first week of December year-on-year, only about a month after their sales figure recovered to 70 percent, following a woeful decline to 7 percent in the first week of October during the Chuseok holiday, year-on-year.

Singing rooms, or Korean-style karaoke rooms, reported their sales slumping to 23 percent in the first week of December year-on-year, a figure that could tank further to 5 percent logged in early September.

Their dramatic sales drop was mostly due to the government’s ban of large gatherings in small indoor facilities prone to mass infection due to poor ventilation.

The Level 3 social distancing necessitated to limit further spread will draw similar shutdowns and bans on late-night operations, affecting about 2.02 million facilities, up from 1.57 million amid the Level 2.5 distancing.

“A far greater number of SMEs will be pushed to the brink of collapse, with their families lives taking a major hit in the process,” Yonsei University economist Sung Tae-yoon said.

“The financial authorities need to extend loans and delay interest payments until after the pandemic subsides. This is better than giving cash relief that will hardly be enough for them to keep their businesses open.”

Data submitted to Rep. Jang Hye-young of the minor opposition Justice Party from Bank of Korea showed that the outstanding loans taken out by the self-employed was 755.1 trillion won ($686 billion) as of June, up 70.2 trillion won from 2019.

This already exceeded half of the annual increase of about 60 trillion won in 2019, with the number of borrowers also jumping 382,000 to 2.2 million in the first six months of 2020, an all-time high increase.

“The figure means many SMEs are barely getting by. This ticking time bomb will go off once the virus spread dies down, at which point the country’s fiscal soundness will have become far shakier,” Sung said.

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Income earned from work globally had a drop of an estimated 10.7%, or $3.5 trillion, in the first nine months of 2020 in comparison to the same period a year ago, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.

The figure is the equivalent of 5.5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) for the first three quarters of last year, the organization said, noting but it excludes income support governments provided to compensate for workplace closures during the coronavirus pandemic.

Developing and emerging economies saw their workers, especially those in informal employment, being affected to a much greater extent than in past crises, it said.

Also, generally a decline in employment numbers was greater for women than men, the United Nations agency added.

In the second quarter alone, the revised estimate of working time lost worldwide was 17.3%, which was equal to 495 million full-time jobs, compared with a previous estimate of 14% or 400 million jobs, the report said.

In the third quarter, it was expected that working-hour losses would be 12.1% or equivalent to 345 million jobs, it said.

And in the final quarter of 2020, working-hour losses of 8.6%, equivalent to 245 million full-time jobs, are projected against the same time a year ago, the ILO said.

So far, more than 32,124,000 have been infected with the coronavirus and over 982,000 have died around the world.

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To take a measure against the spread of the virus, Iran’s National Coronavirus Taskforce has called on responsible authorities to implement the second round of curbs on high-risk businesses and suspend traffic restrictions in Tehran, YJC reported.

In the first phase of shutdown, the government temporarily suspended restrictive traffic rules in Tehran for over two months until June 5. All businesses and shops, except essential ones such as food outlets, grocery stores and bakeries, were under lockdown until April 11 and inter-city traffic restrictions were implemented around the country.

Alireza Zali, the head of Iran’s National Coronavirus Taskforce, suggested that traffic rules must be temporarily canceled and remote work permits should be considered for office employees.

“Online shopping should be promoted to minimize unnecessary travels in the city. These actions can also curb the increased use of public transportation services,” he said.

Zali said 44% of people in the capital city use public transportation or private cars to commute to their workplaces, while 25% of citizens leave home every day for necessary and unnecessary shopping.

“Around 62% of commuters believe social distancing is poorly observed in public transportation vehicles, especially subway trains,” he added, urging urban managers to devise a solution or at least resume the previously implemented measures.

Tehran Mayor Pirouz Hanachi, however, said the traffic rules were canceled for two months until June 6, showing an insignificant effect on reducing crowding in the subway and buses.

“Social distancing is only possible in Tehran’s public transport system if we triple the capacity,” he said, adding that this is too ambitious at present, considering the economic headwinds faced by Tehran Municipality and the government.

What to Do

Tehran Metro CEO Farnoush Nobakht has warned people against undertaking outdoor activities while urging commuters to use the subway in less crowded hours (7-8 a.m. and 1-2 p.m.) as far as possible.

He also urged the general public to use facemasks and stick to health protocols when using the subway as much as possible.

Since President Hassan Rouhani announced that wearing facemasks is obligatory in covered space as of July 5, the metro police are strictly monitoring the passengers, notifying those ignoring the rule.

Saeid Ataollahi, Tehran Metro police chief, said, “The police prevent passengers not wearing facemasks from passing through the entry gates and politely ask them to purchase one from the facemask stall in the metro lobby.”

For passengers with financial problems, facemasks will be offered for free, he added.

The police chief noted that before the mandatory rule was announced, unfortunately, a number of subway commuters overlooked the importance of wearing masks.

“At present, over 90% of the passengers adhere to the face rule. This can exert a controlling effect on the Covid-19 spreading rate, as simply wearing a mask even in a partially crowded train wagon can majorly reduce the risk of getting infected.”

Ataollahi emphasized that the strict measures are for the public good and for their own safety.

“Maximum care should be taken because the virus is still spreading and things could get worse before they get better,” he added.

Health Hazard

Health experts have repeatedly warned that the use of public transport can increase the risk of infection.

Senior officials issue daily warnings that the virus is spreading and the situation has worsened. However, the resumption of social activities is making it very difficult to reduce mortalities and the numbers of hospitalizations have been rising rapidly.

According to the Health Ministry, public vehicles are more polluted compared to universities and schools, so extra care should be taken by commuters.

Urban managers say the ventilation system in subway trains is concentrated, and the air inside cars is constantly circulating and combining with the air outside.

This means one sick person in a train can possibly pollute the air in all cars. The same is true in public buses.

By July 15, the virus has infected 262,173 people in the country, of whom 13,211 have died. Based on the Health Ministry’s regular reports, 225,270 patients have recovered.

Solution to Current Shortfalls

In offering a solution for shortcomings, Mohsen Hashemi, chairman of Tehran City Council, had earlier said more vehicles should be added to the public transportation fleet.

That said, social distancing is impossible in a crowded city like Tehran that has spread in all four directions in the past half-century and is home to 10 million people.

In late February, the government intended to use the National Development Fund of Iran to help Tehran Municipality buy 630 subway cars.

The announcement was made in a meeting between Es’haq Jahangiri, first vice president, and Hashemi, where they discussed ways of expanding and improving public transport.

Mohammad Alikhani, the head of Tehran’s Transportation Commission, later told reporters that the government will allocate funds as soon as experts complete their estimations and select the companies.

Ali Emam, Tehran Metro’s CEO, told reporters that 16 train wagons will be added to the capital’s subway by late July.

One thousand subway cars are in use in the capital’s urban subway system, 30% of which need to be renovated. With the slow addition of new train cars, Tehran’s subway still seems far away from a decent means of public transportation.

The subway stretches over 220 kilometers and comprises seven lines (1 to 7) with 120 stations. Lines 6 and 7 are not yet fully operational.

On a normal day, over four million people use the subway. The municipality expects the numberto surge by 25% after the two remaining lines are completed.

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