About 17% of Greeks over 60 are unvaccinated despite various efforts to prod them to get their shots, and nine in 10 Greeks now dying of COVID-19 are over 60. The fines will be tacked onto tax bills in January. In Greece, residents over 60 face fines of 100 euros ($113) a month if they fail to get vaccinated. I myself was a little disappointed, but we have to look ahead,” he said. Everybody did their best, we had one of the highest rates of vaccinations, and it wasn’t enough.
“There was a lot of disappointment in the effects of vaccination. Huburt Bruls, who as mayor of the Dutch city of Nijmegen banned a protest last weekend, said he sympathized with the frustration but was prepared to carry out the national rules.
I know how sick people get,” said Wilma van Kampen. “The only thing we can do is to listen to the rules, follow them and hope it’s not getting worse. But most people appeared resigned to rush through errands and head home. In the Netherlands, where the lockdown went into effect last week, mounted police patrol the streets to break up demonstrations. They need families, they need to see people, obviously safely, socially distancing, but I really think, this Christmas now, people have had enough,” said Belinda Storey, who runs a stall at a Christmas market in Nottingham, England. New restrictions, or variations on the old ones, are cropping up around the world, especially in Europe, where leaders are at pains to explain what looks like a failed promise: that mass vaccinations would mean an end to widely loathed limitations. “We’re trying to take a balanced and proportioned approach.” “I know the frustration that we all feel with this omicron variant, the sense of exhaustion that we could be going through this all over again,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday, two days after the government announced that masks would be mandatory again in stores and on public transportation and required all visitors from abroad to undergo a COVID-19 test and quarantine. It’s a thorny calculus made more difficult by the prospect of backlash, increased social divisions and, for many politicians, the fear of being voted out of office. With the delta variant of COVID-19 pushing up cases in Europe and growing fears over the omicron variant, governments around the world are weighing new measures for populations tired of hearing about restrictions and vaccines. In Israel, the government on Thursday halted the use of a controversial phone-tracking technology to trace possible cases of the new coronavirus variant after a public uproar. lockdown and other new restrictions have descended into violence, despite what appears to be overwhelming acceptance of the rules. Weekly protests in the Netherlands over the country’s 5 p.m. PARIS (AP) - Greeks over 60 who refuse coronavirus vaccinations could be hit with monthly fines of more than one-quarter of their minimum pensions - a get-tough policy that the country’s politicians say will cost votes but save lives.