Greece will move hundreds of migrants from a camp on the island of Lesbos to mainland facilities on Sunday as part of efforts to ease overcrowding, police and government officials said.
The European Union has asked Greece to move migrants most at risk of contracting the coronavirus from overcrowded camps on its Mediterranean islands.
Athens had opposed moving them all to the mainland, citing the absence of cases in the camps while the coronavirus was spreading elsewhere in the country.
“Authorities are getting ready to transfer a group of about 395 migrants seen as vulnerable later today to the mainland via ship,” a police official, who declined to be named, said.
The group will leave the Moria camp on the eastern Aegean island, which is close to Turkey.
Greece has been the main gateway into the EU for people fleeing conflict in the Middle East and beyond. More than a million people reached its shores from Turkey in 2015-16.
At least 110,000 people are living in migrant facilities – 40,000 of them in overcrowded camps on five islands.
“The goal is to transfer about 2,400 from island camps to mainland Greece,” a Migration Ministry official said.