A cold snap that has killed dozens of people across Europe is testing Greece's whittled-down welfare services, which have been grappling deep cuts amid the nation's ongoing fiscal crisis.

In Athens, authorities have opened emergency shelters, including at the Olympic sports complex, to help warm the city's burgeoning ranks of poor and homeless people.

"We have a limited number of staff but we work round the clock, in addition to providing 1,250 free meals daily," said Dimitra Noussi, director of the city's homeless shelters and its solidarity support.

Temperatures in the capital Wednesday dropped below five degrees Celsius -- the lowest this year -- and elsewhere in Greece, the mercury plunged far below freezing.

Unlike many public services, Noussi said her 55-member team had thankfully been spared government-imposed staffing cuts as Greece struggles to slash its payroll and rein in deficits that have exploded the country's debt.

But Dimitra Tsakiri, shelter supervisor in the port town of Piraeus, was not so fortunate.

Her contract and those of seven colleagues were terminated last March and the shelter shut down in a government reform accompanied by spending cutbacks, Tsakiri said.

Overall, the government plans to axe 150,000 civil servant positions by 2015 under loan agreements with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The Piraeus prefecture has since re-opened the shelter, which offers free baths and clean clothes, but Tsakiri is now an unpaid volunteer.

"My husband's business is also going badly, and I sold some land to make ends meet," she said. "At least I have a home, so I consider myself lucky compared to those who are homeless."

Greece has so far escaped the worst effects of the latest cold snap sweeping much of Europe this past week, killing at least 80 people.

But at least one homeless man died of cold on the island of Crete, and several undocumented migrants have drowned or died of hypothermia in Greece's frozen northeast, where temperatures have plunged as low as minus 20 Celsius at night.

The most recent fatality was Wednesday, when a 25-year-old African migrant died of cold while trying to cross the River Evros, which runs along the Greece-Turkey border.

"We are praying that there will be no homeless deaths in Athens," said Noussi, the Athens city shelters supervisor. "We are doing the best we can, street teams are sent out every night with food and blankets, but it's not easy as these people are very vulnerable."

She added many homeless people are reluctant to give up their regular street spots to find shelter, and said drug addicts and refugees were also at risk from the cold.

Around a hundred people sought shelter overnight in four emergency shelters made available by Athens municipal authorities, one of them an indoor gymnasium.

Another hall in the city's Olympic sports complex was added Wednesday.

Greece is in the grip of a five-year recession, with nearly 900,000 people out of work, or over 17 percent of the workforce, according to official figures.

Officials say it's hard to calculate how many more people need welfare help today compared to at the start of the country's debt crisis, particularly as many who reach out for help do not want their problems documented.

Tsakiri said that in the past, more than half the people helped were foreign migrants, many from Africa.

"Now I'm sorry to say the majority are Greeks. People out of work, people with debts. Men thrown out of their homes by their families," Tsakiri said. "They are ashamed to even walk through the door."