Greek authorities have quarantined a cluster of towns in the country's Turkish-majority northeast after several cases and a death from the new coronavirus in the area.

The area in Xanthi prefecture was placed in lockdown on Wednesday evening as a total of nine people in the region have tested positive for the virus over the past six days, Nikos Hardalias, civil protection deputy minister, told reporters.

"All residents have been temporarily confined at home. No exceptions are allowed," Hardalias said.

The center of the outbreak appears to be the small Pomak town of Şahin (Ehinos), a community of about 2,500.

"Ehinos residents will be provided with food and medicine," Hardalias said.

One 72-year-old Şahin man has died from the virus, local mayor Ridvan Deli Hüseyin told Antenna television.

"It's better to take some measures now than to cry about this later," said Hüseyin, the mayor of the local administrative center of Miki.

The Pomaks are a Muslim group of Slavic origin who live mainly in neighboring Bulgaria.

They make up part of Greece's roughly 110,000-strong Muslim minority in the country's northeast bordering Turkey.

Many of them work as migrant industrial workers in other European countries.

According to Greek state television ERT, several hundred Pomak workers have recently returned from shipyards and construction work in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

There are 22 deaths and 821 officially announced infections from the coronavirus in Greece, which has a population of 11 million.