At the beginning of April, staff of the Sotiria Public Hospital in the Greek capital, Athens, issued an open letter complaining they had been supplied with “defective” masks to guard against infection from patients with COVID-19.

Sotiria has handled the majority of those hospitalised with the virus in Greece, which has roughly 1,735 confirmed cases, of which 76 have died.

The conservative government, however, was unimpressed.

“We buy equipment certified and appropriate for medical use,” Deputy Minister of Health Vassilis Kontozamanis told a regular coronavirus press conference later the same day, dismissing the letter as “the fake news of the day”.

Responding to concerns raised, the Greek PM visited the hospital on April 6 during the delivery of large quantities of protective equipment including 5,000 masks of high standards.

But the complaint from the staff of Sotiria was only the latest salvo in a row between the government and frontline health professionals over the protection afforded them in the fight against COVID-19 and the overall response of authorities to the pandemic.

Similar complaints have been made by doctors and nurses at hospitals across the country, including the northern cities of Thessaloniki, Serres and Kastoria, the latter among the worst affected by the pandemic.

So far, over 90 nursing and administrative staff are believed to have been infected while on duty. Hundreds have been quarantined.

Doctors have asked for additional nursing and medical staff to be hired. The government has started increasing numbers but on short term contracts, a measure characterised as inadequate by Afroditi Retzoy, president of Federation of Greek Hospital Doctors, OENGE, which represents more than 10,000 doctors in the public health system.

“If the appropriate measures are not taken, lives will be lost, lives that could have been saved” Retsoy told a news conference on April 1.

Equipment: ‘They tell us to save as much as we can’