Greece has done a pretty good job controlling the COVID-19 pandemic. The country is planning for a big summer tourist season as of June 15, 2020, though before that's even starting, one airline has been temporary banned from flying to Greece.
On June 1, Qatar Airways flight 203 operated from Doha to Athens as scheduled, representing one of the first flights restored between the two countries since the pandemic started.
Greece is doing COVID-19 testing for all passengers on arrival until June 15, and all 91 passengers on the flight were tested. Of those, 12 tested positive for coronavirus. Because of this:
Due to the number of passengers who tested positive, Greek's Civil Protection Ministry has banned all flights to and from Qatar until June 15, 2020. While this in theory applies to other airlines as well, in reality Qatar Airways is the only airline flying between the two counties.
The connection between the passengers who tested positive for COVID-19 isn't known. Were they all traveling together? Were they on the same connecting flight from somewhere else? Did the transmission happen on the plane?
12 of 91 passengers on a Qatar Airways flight tested positive for COVID-19
Fortunately this incident happened while Greece is still testing all arriving passengers, so hopefully these 12 passengers won't spread COVID-19 to anyone else. Who knows how many cases could have resulted if Greece wasn't doing testing on arrival (and it also raises a lot of concerns about the risk when Greece stops regularly testing arriving passengers in the coming weeks).
This also raises an important overall question about the role airlines play in stopping the spread of COVID-19:
Greece is still testing all arriving passengers for now
I totally get Greece banning flights from Qatar, but what should the airline have done differently? It's one thing if all the passengers originated in Qatar, but otherwise if the airline simply operated as the transit airline, which part of this is their responsibility?
As China allows foreign airlines to resume service, a similar situation is emerging, as the country will penalize airlines that carry passengers who test positive for COVID-19:
Greece has banned Qatar Airways flights for about two weeks after 12 passengers from a single flight tested positive for COVID-19.
This sure makes you wonder about Greece reopening to tourists on a widespread basis as of June 15 without testing. It also raises a lot of questions about the responsibility that airlines have to ensure passengers don't have COVID-19, given that there aren't any airlines out there requesting testing prior to flying.