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Ministry of Health and Human Services

Hospitals and clinics in Athens and Byzantium will be participating in an exercise over the next several weeks to help determine large city response to disease outbreaks.

The simulation will include a novel flu virus with a mortality rate of 3.5% with a peak mortality rate of 10%.

This exercise will help determine the hospitals ability to respond to an event like this. Ability to diagnose, isolate and treat will be examined. Additionally city services will be examined to see how they handle cases that do not make it to the hospital or those who are sent home. At home monitoring of patients will be included. Additionally contact tracing will be a crucial part of this program. Identifying cases, tracing who they were around is the difference between holding a virus back and having the flood gates open. Mask wearing in public will also be looked at.

500,000 people have volunteered to be patients, 250,000 in each city. Though open participation is encouraged.

This exercise will help examine Hellenic ability to respond and find areas we need to invest in to improve responses.