On Tuesday, the 19th of March, the Latvian government approved the proposal from the Ministry of Health that provides for the allocation of funding of EUR 1.99 million to cover the costs that surfaced in December 2023 because of a repeated Covid-19 infection outbreak.
The ministry’s proposal also provides for the distribution of appropriations from the state budget programme “Funding for health measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 infection”.
Also read: Latvia disposes of 2.1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses due to expiration
The project provides for distributing EUR 169 906 towards the programme “Provision of emergency medical care in inpatient medical institutions” for diagnosing and treatment activities. EUR 1 236 988 is planned to be diverted towards the “Provision of planned inpatient health care services”.
Another EUR 588 301 is planned to be diverted towards the provision of other outpatient health care services
to cover expenses related to the performance of laboratory examinations, the use of personal protective equipment and disinfectants for the provision of services, sub-acute medical rehabilitation and dynamic observation.
The Ministry of Health reports that autumn months of 2023 were the first since the initial pandemic when mask-wearing was completely lifted as a mandatory measure. House-sitting for contact persons, surveying contact persons and reporting was made unnecessary as well. It is because of this reason there was a surge of Covid-19 infections in Latvia. As the number of confirmed infections went up, so did the number of tests and hospitalised patients. This, in turn, caused a surge of Covid-19 patient treatment costs.
Also read: Politico: EU countries throw away four billion euros worth of Covid-19 vaccines
Follow us on Facebook and X!