'Yellow list' gone, Latvia now benchmarks countries against its own COVID-19 rate

It means that from October 10 only people travelling direct from the Vatican, Norway, Finland and Cyprus in Europe will be able to do without a 10-day quarantine regime.

The latest change to the rules sees the previous threshold of 25 cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 of population cumulatively over 14 days ditched in favor or a new threshold: the case level in Latvia itself (currently quoted as 40.4 cases per 100,000 of population).

The news was released by the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (SPKC) in its regular Friday afternoon update.

As COVID-19 rates of infection are increasing across Europe, nearly all European countries are now on the "red list" of countries to which a visit is strongly advised against. All red list countries require ten days of self-isolation.

The former "yellow list" of countries with a medium risk to health has been dropped entirely so that there is now a clear distinction between "red list" and "white list" countries.

International passenger transport is allowed only to European countries where the cumulative incidence rate does not exceed twice the EU average.

The full list of countries is available at the SPKC website, in English, Latvian and Russian, along with advice on how to follow the self-isolation rules and the conditions applying to all persons, be they Latvian nationals or other nationalities.

We have also attached the list in PDF format to this story for your convenience.