Schoolchildren returning from foreign vacations who return negative on an airport coronavirus test after arriving back in Estonia have no real need to quarantine, head of the government s coronavirus advisory council says.
Schools are on their spring break in Estonia this week; returnees from foreign vacations were seen as a major source of introduced infections in the initial coronavirus wave a year ago, though the current restrictions – set to expire after week – require schoolchildren to self-isolate if they have been abroad.
Talking to ERR Monday, Professor Irja Lutsar, virologist and head of the government s scientific council said: [Arrivals] should be tested at the airport first and foremost, regardless of which country they came from. There are relatively few strains of the South African strain in Estonia, and fortunately, numbers have not risen much. However, my concern is focused on a strain of the South African variant which has also developed a little more locall
Restrictions should be based on the infection rate of the whole population and deaths from the last seven days, the government s scientific advisory council has said.
Speaking to ERR on Tuesday, Professor Irja Lutsar, head of the council, said the decision-makers are staring at a so-called traffic light of different indicators when creating rules and currently Estonia s deaths and infection rate are flashing red.
Lutsar did not say how low the rates must drop before the government should make its next decision on restrictions.
Looking at the infection over the last few days, the numbers have slightly decreased and Lutsar expressed hope that the effect of vaccination would start to show.
Spokespeople both for the Health Board (Terviseamet) and government s coronavirus advisory council oppose calls for mass, rapid coronavirus testing in the residential Tallinn district of Lasnamäe, mainly on logistical grounds and in terms of the timing, rather than in principle.
Professor Irja Lutsar, head of the government s scientific council, opposed mass testing, saying that if this were to go ahead it should take place within just a few days. It is certainly not right to get people to congregate together. In that case there would be specific ways of carrying out testing, and the most important moment of that is what we do with people with these positive tests, Lutsar said.
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Estonia will continue to vaccinate people with the AstraZeneca vaccine, Estonia s immunoprophylaxis expert committee has said because the benefits outweigh the negatives.
Immunoprophylaxis expert committee commission member Professor Irja Lutsar told ETV s current affairs show Aktuaalne kaamera on Tuesday evening: We decided that we will not stop vaccinations. For now, it is not clearly proven that the vaccine is related to thrombosis.
Lutsar also said no causal relationship between the AstraZeneca vaccine and thrombosis has been found.
She said that the expert committee will meet again on Thursday and by then the European Medical Agency s (EMA) report on the subject should have been published.