Lithuania has confirmed 11 new Covid-19 cases over the last 24 hours. A growing infection rate is worrisome, according to a public health official.
All but two new cases have been reported in Kaunas County, central Lithuania. Five infections were contracted abroad, according to the National Public Health Centre (NVSC) and five have been linked to existing clusters.
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The source of one infection is as yet unclear, according to health officials.
Three people have been diagnosed with Covid 19 after arriving from Uzbekistan via Minsk. One more person returned from Ivory Coast.
One person travelled to Kyiv, Ireland and France before returning to Lithuania on July 24. He fell ill the same day and subsequently tested positive for the coronavirus.
In all, Lithuania has confirmed 2,019 Covid-19 cases. Of them, 1,620 people have already recovered and 306 are active cases. Eighty people have died of Covid-19 so far.
The infection rate in Lithuania – measured as the number of new cases per population of 100,000 over the last two weeks – rose from 2.8 to 3.7 last week.
Twenty-two new cases were reported over the weekend and 26 on Friday.
The situation “gives cause for concern”, said Rolanda Lingienė, an epidemiologist with the NVSC.
“It's the biggest [infection rate] since the peak at the start of monitoring on May 29 when it was 5.3 and and was growing for a few weeks,” Lingienė told LRT RADIO on Monday morning. “We must respond.”
According to her, some 26 percent of the new Covid-19 cases diagnosed lately were contracted abroad. Moreover, in 24 percent of the cases epidemiologists cannot trace the infections to any known clusters, which “gives raise to even more concern”, according to Lingienė.
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