Ministry of Health recommends an extension of the state of emergency for at least three to four weeks

  • 2021-12-30
  • LETA/TBT Staff

RIGA - The Ministry of Health recommends the state of emergency to be extended for at least three to four weeks, according to the protocol of the Operational Management Group's (OMG) meeting of December 28, which has been made public.

The Ministry of Health indicated at the meeting that currently it is not possible to ease epidemiological safety requirements.

At the same time, the ministry has also proposed additional safety conditions, such as the use of medical masks or FFP2 face masks, mandatory testing of employees in critical industries, maximum remote working, as well as additional self-testing for services such as amateur sports, choirs and dance groups.

The Ministry of Health has been entrusted with preparing the above recommendations as amendments to the Cabinet of Ministers' order On the Declaration of a State of Emergency and sending them to members of the OMG and discussing them at the OMG meeting on January 3 next year.

The Ministry of Health has also been entrusted with updating the recommendations for a safe work environment.

The record of the meeting also shows that after hearing the report on the prevalence of the Covid-19 omicron strain in Latvia, ministry representatives and social partners do not support the introduction of significant additional security measures.

Ministries, in cooperation with the sectors, are instructed to continue developing sectoral business continuity plans based on modeling forecasts and infection rates, taking into account the experience of other countries.

The current state of emergency is in force in Latvia until January 11, 2022.