Before Christmas, the government decided to suspend the provision of inpatient hospital assistance for two weeks. On Monday, December 28, morning, Health Minister Ilze Viņķele said that the ministry was considering temporarily restricting scheduled outpatient health services to curb the rapid spread of COVID-19 infection.
On Monday evening, however, the Ministry of Health decided that it would not recommend limiting outpatient services for the time being, Sanita Janka, head of the Ministry's Health Quality Division, said.
At the same time, the Ministry will ask to strengthen epidemiological safety requirements in outpatient services.
“As hospital services are limited, a large part of them are switching to the outpatient sector. In order for patients to be able to receive these services, it was decided not to limit outpatient services at the moment, but to follow the infection rates and to oblige the medical authorities to comply very closely with these epidemiological safety requirements so that medics do not infect themselves and patients do not infect medics,” explained Janka.