RIGA, July 15 (Xinhua) -- In a bid to prevent COVID-19 infections being brought into Latvia, the Baltic country's government decided on Wednesday that all travelers arriving from abroad will be registered and surveyed to better monitor their compliance with epidemiological safety requirements, local media informed.
As of this Thursday, July 16, all international travelers arriving in Latvia by air, sea and land will be required to fill out a form in which they will be asked to indicate the countries they have been to in the past two weeks prior to arriving in Latvia.
The provision will also apply to people arriving in Latvia on private aircraft and yachts.
The government also decided that Latvian temporary residence permits will only be granted to applicants from countries where the cumulative 14-day number of COVID-19 cases is below 16 per 100,000 residents.
The government also adopted a provision allowing authorities to revoke residence permits or visas of non-EU citizens who breach the two-week self-isolation requirement upon arriving in Latvia, Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said at a news conference following an extraordinary cabinet meeting. He indicated that the provision has yet to be approved by the parliament.
An alternative punishment for flouting the self-isolation requirement will be a fine of up to 2,000 euros (about 2,284 U.S. dollars), the minister said.
The government has come up with the new measures after Latvia recorded an uptick in new COVID-19 cases last week, many of them related to international travel. Enditem
