President: a great number of residents in Latvia are «turned» non-vaccinated and doubters

There is a large number of Latvian residents who have «turned» anti-Covid-19 vaccinated and doubters. These people put society at risk and actively spread their opinions on social media, said Latvia’s President Egils Levits in an interview to LTV programme Šodienas jautājums on Tuesday, 5 October.
The president said every day brings more Covid-19 patients. Talks have commenced in Latvia to make people not vaccinated for Covid-19 pay for the stay in hospital from their own wallet if they ignored the invitation to getting vaccinated and ended up hospitalized.
He reminded that 10 000 signatures have been collected on manabalss.lv platform in favour of making non-vaccinated residents cover hospitalization expenses from their own wallet if the end up hospitalized with Covid-19.
Levits says he does not support such an approach. However, he notes this matter should be discussed, because it is only fair for people who act responsibly towards their fellow man to not pay for the people who do not.
«I would like to see the Saeima debate this issue,» says Levits.
He said he sees two possible solutions to help reduce the spread of Covid-19. First of all, it is necessary to reduce opportunities for people to get infected. Secondly, it is necessary to expand coverage of Covid-19 vaccination efforts.
Read also: Latest Covid-19 cases in Baltics. 1 010 in Latvia, 1 524 in Lithuania, 896 in Estonia
The president adds that in order to reduce the spread of Covid-19, it may be necessary to expand compulsory vaccination for different professions. The same applies to restrictions for different activities. Levits also believes the government should consider new ways to motivate people to vaccinate. He says one way of doing this is by adopting restrictions for non-vaccinated people.
He believes it is necessary to impose tighter restrictions for non-vaccinated people. At the same time, restrictions may also extend to vaccinated people.
«First of all, we need to halt the spread of the virus among non-vaccinated people,» said the president.
As previously reported, Latvian Crisis Management Council failed to reach an agreement on future Covid-19 measures and decided to continue discussions on Thursday, 7 October.