Travel and tourism associations, airlines, railway companies and a number of other sectors affected by Covid-19, a total of 5,000 companies from more than 20 Member States of the European Union (EU), have agreed on a joint action with European Commission President Urzula von der Leien.
It is requested to end the post-entry self-isolation requirements by replacing them with a single Covid-19 test protocol. Here in Latvia, those responsible for public health call it a huge risk of losing the current status of Covid-19 as the safest country in the EU.
The EC in early September and the European Parliament (EP) last week called on all Member States to introduce common restrictions on the spread of Covid-19. This would facilitate the movement of people across borders without the need for self-isolation and revitalize the tourism and aviation industries. However, this has only a recommendatory effect and not a regulation, as each country is individually entitled to shape its own health policy. And Latvia’s position, represented by the Ministry of Health (MoH), currently remains unchanged – Latvia will not respond to the EU’s call to change the cumulative morbidity rate from 16 to 50 cases per 100,000 population. Such a sharp jump may be too dangerous for Latvia.
Jana Feldmane, Head of the Environmental Health Department of the Ministry of Environment, states: This will place a burden on our Center for Disease Prevention and Control (SPCC) when the situation should be monitored and contacts found. Also, as the number of patients in medical institutions increases, so will the burden on the healthcare sector. ”
In other words, if the health care system of the rich countries of the EU could cope so much, then the crisis in Latvian hospitals would start due to Covid-19. Ģirts Briģis, a public health expert not involved in health policy decision-making, also does not support the idea of uniform EU cumulative morbidity rates per 100,000 population for self-isolation.
“For us, an increase to 25 or even higher is a huge leap up, and in the Latvian situation it would not be an adequate action. The main source of infection is migrants. If we increase this number, it means that we no longer have such attention to countries that are currently considered very dangerous, ”explains Ģirts Briģis, Head of the Department of Public Health and Epidemiology at RSU.
The Ministry of Health also does not support the second EP proposal – to look at morbidity indicators not within the country as a whole, but by individual regions. Without the requirement for self-isolation upon return, this would open up opportunities to travel, for example, to Spain and Greece, where morbidity rates would then be broken down by island. Germany would then also be divided into federal states.
“We do not support this division into regions, because it is a question of data quality, the possibility to objectively evaluate and analyze data. In small countries, where those regions are closely linked, it is not possible to separate human flows. There, the situation in one region has a significant impact on other regions. It would be difficult to separate it, ”says Feldmane.
Experts in Latvia also do not support the idea of following the example of Lithuania and Estonia, which have recently relaxed the requirement for self-isolation. The rapid rise in Covid-19 disease in neighboring countries is clear evidence of this. Latvia’s position remains unchanged – it is not worth risking the entire public health and the national economy just to reduce the blow to some sectors of the economy.
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