The European Union has been urged to evacuate asylum seekers from overcrowded camps on the Greek islands in order to save lives.

The European parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee has called for the evacuation of 42,000 people on the Greek islands as “an urgent preventive” measure to avoid “many deaths” from coronavirus.

Holding facilities on all five Aegean isles opposite the Turkish coast are currently six times over capacity.

The first case of Covid-19 on the islands was confirmed earlier this month when a Greek woman on Lesbos, the island long on the frontline of the refugee crisis, tested positive. A Greek man, recently returned from Thailand, was diagnosed with the virus on Monday, reinforcing fears of an outbreak in camps seen as especially high-risk environments .

MEPs fear that if the virus spreads it could become a public health emergency in the squalid camps, where thousands live in unsanitary conditions, often without electricity, heating or running water.

“Many of those in the camps are already in precarious health situations due to the bad conditions in which they have lived for a long time,” states the letter from Juan Fernando López Aguilar, a Spanish socialist MEP, who chairs the committee. “There is no chance of isolation or social distancing, nor is it possible to ensure appropriate hygienic conditions,” he wrote.

The letter adds that only six intensive care beds are available on Lesbos for residents and asylum seekers. The notorious Moria camp on Lesbos houses nearly 20,000 people in a space designed for 2,200.

“If the EU fails to take immediate action, the situation on the Greek islands will become unmanageable with the risk of many deaths. This is an emergency and the EU has to react accordingly,” the letter states.

The MEPs want people over 60 with existing health conditions evacuated first, but do not spell out whether they should go to other EU member states or the Greek mainland.

The European commission said it was working with Greece on an emergency response plan to deal with a potential outbreak of coronavirus on the islands. A commission spokesperson said Greek authorities were taking action to prevent the spread of the disease, with compulsory temperature testing of new arrivals to the camps, suspension of visits, regular cleaning of communal areas, and the setting up of quarantine and recovery areas.

The spokesperson also referred to an ongoing push to encourage EU member states to give a home to unaccompanied children on the Greek islands. Seven countries pledged earlier this month to take in 1,600 children from the islands.

“Discussions are ongoing about the operational, practical aspects of the relocation [of children] as a matter of urgency and we are very much hoping to have this up and running as soon as possible,” a commission spokesperson said.

Growing restrictions on everyday life across Europe raise questions about how quickly relocation can happen.

Greece went into nationwide lockdown on Monday, limiting residents to their homes for all but essential journeys.

A few days before the lockdown began, Ylva Johansson, EU commissioner for home affairs, told journalists that Greek authorities were carrying out age assessments on asylum seekers in order to begin relocation of children.

She also said asylum procedures in many EU member states were slowing down. “Many member states have put asylum processes on hold because they don’t want to do face-to-face meetings and then there are no interviews with asylum seekers. Some member states are beginning to do that on Skype instead, but this brings some delay into the system.”

Restrictions on travel from Europe are also slowing the return of people whose asylum claims have been rejected, to their country of origin. “This is not really a problem yet, but there are a lot of cases that we know are on hold and that could cause problems in the long run,” Johansson said.

Human rights groups have urged Athens to take action. In a joint statement on Tuesday , 21 groups said: “Extremely limited access to running water, toilets, and showers, as well as hours-long lines for food distribution and insufficient medical and nursing personnel, make it impossible to abide by the guidelines for protection from the coronavirus, putting people at significantly heightened risk in the face of the growing threat of widespread Covid-19 transmission.”

Speaking to the Guardian last week, the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed hope that around 5,000 migrants would help ease the pressure by “taking up” the EU’s “generous offer”, but acknowledged it was just the tip of the iceberg. The scheme to relocate up to 1,600 unaccompanied minors to other member states wasn’t expected to be in place until May, he said.

As an emergency step, authorities have placed all of the migrant camps on lockdown since March 16, banning visitors, including aid agencies, from entering them. The measure was enforced a week before similar restrictions came into effect nationwide.

Earlier this month, some 450 people, who arrived on the outposts after March 1st- when Greece closed its borders to asylum seekers following Turkey’s threat to “open the gates to Europe” - were moved in a tank landing vessel to detention centres on the mainland. Athens’ migration minister Notis Mitarachis said authorities had deliberately kept the new arrivals away from the camps to reduce the risk of an outbreak. But he conceded that it is only a matter of time before the virus reached the camps. “It is a given that there will be cases,” he told Sunday’s Eleftheros Typos newspaper.