40% fewer vacancies. The drops were significant in sectors such as hotels and restaurants, and entertainment, as well as in occupations that are more difficult to perform from home. They also find that users reduced job-search intensity and seemed to have re-directed their searches to occupations that are more likely to be performed from home and more resilient to the crisis.

Alstadsæter et al. (2020) study the impacts of COVID-19 on layoffs in Norway, a country that has strongly relied on unemployment insurance benefits to mitigate the impacts of the crisis. Their analysis based on UI claims data shows that almost all layoffs up to April 19 were temporary. Even if accounting for only 10% of the total number of layoffs, permanent layoffs generated a 1.5 percentage point increase in unemployment, a significant month-to-month variation for Norway. They also show that layoffs affect populations that are already financially vulnerable (low-income, low-educated, immigrants) and are more common in jobs that require physical proximity, especially in the initial phases of the crisis. Similarly, they find that in the early stages of the crisis, the impacts were mostly felt by women and young workers, but as time passed men and older workers were also significantly impacted.

The Korean experience also provides interesting insights as the government mainly relied on testing and tracing and less on lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus. Aum et al. (2020) find that a one per thousand increase in infections leads to an almost 3% decrease in local employment. They compare these effects to those in the United Kingdom and the United States, where lockdowns were introduced, and note that employment losses were almost double in these countries. Shedding light on the channels driving these results, the authors find that employment losses were mainly due to a slowdown in hiring by firms and to transition of workers out of the labor market rather than to unemployment. The authors note that at the time of publication, the Korean government had not implemented any public furlough scheme. The paper also shows that employment losses were mainly experienced in small businesses (less than 30 employees), and that the workers with the highest probability to lose their jobs were less educated, young, employed in low-wage occupations, with temporary contracts, or self-employed. Men were also more affected than women. With the exception of the gender results, these results are similar to those found by other studies for the United States and the United Kingdom.

# **3. COVID-19 in Greece: Evolution and measures taken**

## **3.1 The spread of the virus and the lockdown measures**

The first case of COVID-19 in Greece was confirmed on February 26. Figure 1 shows the trend in new cases from that date. Compared to many other countries in Europe, where cases and fatalities exploded quickly, the pandemic progressed slowly in Greece. The government has been credited with reacting quickly to the pandemic, introducing various restrictions even when cases and fatalities were quite low. For example, on March 10, before most of Europe, schools and universities nationwide were ordered closed, when there were just 89 confirmed cases and no deaths. The first virus-related death in Greece was recorded on March 12. The outbreak peaked in early April when new cases were approaching 100 per day. By April 21, there were 2,401 confirmed cases; 150 new cases, all asymptomatic, were related to one refugee facility located in Northern Greece. As of early July, Greece had around 3,500 confirmed cases and slightly fewer than 200 deaths from the virus.

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