About 200 employees of Emergency Medical Service are on sick leave

RIGA - Of more than 3,000 employees of the Emergency Medical Service, about 200 are on a sick leave, said the service's director Liene Cipule in an interview with the commercial TV3 program.

The Emergency Medical Service in 2019 employed 3,281 peoople.

Cipule said that the number of sick leaves granted in the past weeks has risen, but most of the employees are contact persons of established Covid-19 patients.

So far, about 190 employees have already recovered from Covd-19.

Cipule said that from the first batch of Covid-19 vaccines, the emergency service has been granted 600 doses. So far 250 employees have receive vaccines, but more than 800 employees have applied for vaccination. "I think this number will rise as there will be additional deliveries," said Cipule.

She said that there are no categorical rejections of the vaccine among Emergency Medical Service employees, but some colleagues are still thinking about it. "The more colleagues receive the vaccine, the more doubts are dispersed, and we see that employees are applying more actively," she said.

As reported, Latvia has received a second batch with 13,650 Comirnaty vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech.

Pfizer and BioTech plans to deliver all ordered vaccines in the first quarter of this year. According to publicly available information, Latvia has ordered 97,500 vaccines from Pfizer and BioNTech, which will be sufficient for vaccination of 48,750 people.