(Reuters) – Latvian President Egils Levits tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday, his office said, prompting Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto who had breakfast with him a day earlier to self-isolate.
The infection was found during a routine test after Levits visited Sweden on Wednesday for an inter-governmental forum, his office said.
Levits would continue to work remotely but other diary items had been cancelled, including a visit by his Romanian counterpart this week and the Latvian president’s visit to Kosovo and North Macedonia next week, his office said.
The president was vaccinated with second AstraZeneca shot in April, his spokeswoman told BNS news agency.
Latvia confirmed 2,408 new novel coronavirus cases and 21 deaths on Thursday, a record surge, BNS reported. Only 52% of Latvian adults are fully vaccinated, well below European Union average of 75%, EU health figures show.
Latvia has reported 864 new cases per 10,000 population in two weeks until Sunday, second-worst result in EU after neighbour Lithuania.
(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius and Essi Lehto in Helsinki.)
