Youth song festival with mass gatherings sounds absurd and impermissible - chief physician of children's hospital

  • 2021-05-10
  • LETA/TBT Staff

RIGA - A larger outdoor gathering of children and young people like the planned School Youth Song and Dance Celebration sounds absurd, and given the current epidemiological situation, impermissible, Gunta Laizane, chief infectious disease physician at the Children's Clinical University Hospital, told journalists Monday. 

Laizane believes that mass events involving gatherings of children are fraught with infection risks and should not be recommended.

With Covid-19 cases in Latvia's adult population rising again, the rate of infections among children is growing as well, and this rise also correlates with people's growing "negligence to safety measures". 

"As regards to gatherings - we cannot afford to relax or reduce any restrictions, because the numbers speak for themselves," the expert said, warning that the coronavirus is circulating among small kids and adolescents quite actively.

Jurijs Perevoscikovs, Director of the Infectious Diseases Risk Analysis and Prevention Department of the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), also noted a growing number of Covid-19 cases in children, adolescents and young people. 

Earlier, Laizane informed LETA that 70 children had been treated in hospital for serious forms of Covid-19, but by now their number gas grown to 80.