Refugee camp

A refugee camp in Nea Kavala was quarantined by health authorities on Thursday after a pregnant woman tested positive for Covid-19, according to reports in local media.

Teams from the National Organization for Public Health (EODY), along with the Health Ministry's infectious disease expert Sotiris Tsiodras, are at the camp testing all residents.

About 11,000 recognised refugees are facing an uncertain future as they will gradually have to leave their current accommodation facilities starting in June, as part of the Migration Policy Ministry's plan to replace them with asylum seekers from the islands, in a bid to decongest the local camps.

Portugal is to take in 500 children from Greek refugee camps as soon as restrictions on movement imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus outbreak are lifted, the country's Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva said on Tuesday.

Portugal is to take up to 60 unaccompanied children from Greek refugee camps, according to Socialist Party lawmaker Isabel Santos, as concern mounts over the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the vulnerable group.

Greek authorities will begin the gradual transfer of 2,380 asylum seekers and their families from island camps to accommodation facilities on the mainland after Orthodox Easter (April 19), the country's Migration Ministry said Thursday.

The move, which will take place over two weeks, aims to reduce the risk of refugees being infected by the coronavirus.

Germany plans to take in up to 50 unaccompanied minors staying at overcrowded refugee camps in Greece, while Luxembourg has agreed to accept 12, government officials said Tuesday.

A plan is under way to relocate at least 1,600 unaccompanied minors from Greek refugee camps to several European Unon countries, European Commission spokesman Jahnz Adalbert has said.

The relocation was decided on March 6 but has been delayed by the spread of the coronavirus. 

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in overcrowded and rundown camps in Lebanon are bracing for the novel coronavirus as aid groups mobilize to help.    

Lebanon is home to tens of thousands of Palestinians in camps that over the decades have become bustling neighborhoods and at least 1.5 million Syrians who have fled the war next door.    

A new mother from a refugee camp in Ritsona, northeast of the Greek capital, tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the Migration Ministry said on Tuesday.

The woman was tested after being taken to an Athens hospital to give birth on Sunday. Her baby and its father have also been tested and were found to be free of the virus.

After Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said that Croatia was ready to take in some child refugees trapped in refugee camps on Greek islands, hostile comments on social networks condemned the idea, some claiming that parents and wider relatives would then accompany the children - some of whom might be extremists.