Dumpis said that the current vaccination reach in Latvia cannot provide protection from an outbreak of Covid-19 in the autumn. In order to avoid this, mass vaccination should be continued in the coming months.
He stressed that the Latvian society should be ready for autumn: “We need to work seriously. The main thing is not to repeat last summer, when everyone calmed down in the summer, nobody was really preparing. Now everyone wants to rest even more, but unfortunately, we have to be ready for autumn.”
The doctor stressed the importance of “keeping up” important functions in the country: face-to-face education, hospital work, sporting opportunities.
“We should not live another year and a half like that, and we should take care to ensure that there are as many vaccinated people as possible in these important places,” Dumpis said.
He said there might be restrictions that vary between vaccinated and non-vaccinated persons. Vaccination of more than 50% of the population should be achieved in Latvia over the summer, Dumpis said.
He forecast that the delta variant of the virus will overtake the currently dominant alpha variant in Latvia. “But the volume by which it will overtake it is in our hands [..] If we notice and stop such events in time, then perhaps the morbidity figures will not be very high,” said Dumpis.
