Visitors walk down the new cement walkway nearby the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis hill in Athens, Greece, on June 8, 2021.(Photo: Xinhua)

Around 7,000 people on Sunday protested in Athens against a new rule obliging health workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, said police who fired tear gas to quell violence among the demonstrators. The rule change, which came into effect on Wednesday, requires that all personnel working in hospitals be vaccinated.

The demonstrators waved Greek flags and brandished placards declaring: "We are not against vaccines, but against fascism" and "Long live democracy."

"It's amazing that I'm put on sick leave because I refuse to be vaccinated when for months I have helped to contain the epidemic, I have worked in very difficult conditions," said Christos Bakakios, an ambulance driver who joined the protest.

A nurse, who gave her name as Lina, said: "The Greek health system will collapse if they put all the caregivers who refuse to be vaccinated on furlough." "The hospitals are already overcrowded. That would make no sense," she added.

Sporadic violence broke out in the evening. One group of demonstrators threw stones and bottles at the police who responded with tear gas, according to an AFP videographer on the spot.

Greece's government on August 24 announced an array of new restrictions and the end, in September, of free testing for those who remain unjabbed against COVID-19 in an effort to boost vaccination rates. 

The government took the measures in part to encourage people to get vaccinated, as the contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 takes hold. At the moment 99 percent of seriously ill coronavirus patients, those intubated in hospital, have not been vaccinated.

Retired home workers have been obliged to get vaccinated since mid-August. Ten employees at a home in Volos, in the center of the country, were recently suspended from work.

More than 5.7 million of Greece's 10.7 million inhabitants have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus. But the spread of the Delta variant continues to cause concern.

On Sunday Greece registered around 1,500 new COVID-19 cases. Over 13,600 people have died of the disease in the country since the pandemic began.

AFP