Virus-free Greek ‘secluded paradise’ waits for tourists to return

Alekos Sfyriou untangles his fishing line and counts the days until ferries bring visitors back to his sleepy Greek isle.

“All the small islands are waiting for tourists,” the 62-year-old fisherman says, slouched beneath a tree on the harbour. “They’ll eat the fish I catch.”

There have been no reported cases of COVID-19 on Halki, a tiny island closer to Turkey than Athens, where the only sound piercing a quiet April morning was the crowing of a rooster.

Nearly all of its 250 residents have been vaccinated against the virus, local authorities said, anticipating a resurgence of tourism, the economy’s lifeblood.

Residents on many far-flung islands scattered across the Aegean Sea, where populations are old and doctors scarce, have been inoculated as Greece rolls out vaccinations to islands with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants ahead of a formal opening of the tourism season on May 15.

“Greece is thinking big by vaccinating the small islands first, to make these secluded paradises safe,” said George Hatzimarkos, the governor of Greece’s most popular region, the south Aegean.

On Halki, with its postcard-perfect seafront town of pastel-coloured homes, a tourism season of six to eight months helps it get through the rough winter, Mayor Angelos Fragkakis said.

“Essentially, it’s our oxygen,” he said.

Despite the worst tourism year in decades for Greece in 2020, Halki enjoyed a good season with many Greeks choosing small island getaways.