Kiik: Closing society has severe consequences and can only be a temporary measure

Minister of Health and Labor Tanel Kiik. Photo: Eero Vabamägi / Postimees

People who have received the first dose of vaccine now outnumber COVID-19 cases for the last 12 months.

Minister of Health and Labor Tanel Kiik said on the “Otse Postimehest” webcast that Estonia had vaccinated more peopled with the first dose than have been diagnosed in the last 12 months by Thursday evening. The minister said that the pandemic has reached the home stretch and that vaccination will make it possible to overcome the crisis. “We know that inoculation is a sustainable solution to exit the crisis. However, vaccine quantities and immunization capacity are not yet sufficient for us to be able to rely solely on them,” Kiik said.

How difficult is it to agree on restrictions in the current coalition?

There are always those who want tougher measures and those who want to go easy. It required lengthy debates in the previous government and still does today, while I’m sure that will also be the situation in the future. The decision we made today is a compromise. My message to the public and the government is that we need to take another look at the situation on Tuesday after the scientific council has met to discuss restrictions and made additional proposals, looking at the infection rate, hospitalization trends, the situation in other countries and regarding new strains.

Let us quickly go over the new restrictions.

We have decided to lower public event participant ceilings from 400 to 200 for indoor events and from 500 to 250 for outdoor events. An exception will be made for events with stationary seating where the occupancy requirement will remain unchanged. Talking about hobby activity, we will temporarily restrict all manner of group activity for two weeks between Monday and March 7. Grades 5-12 will be switched to remote learning for at least a week following the February school holiday. We strongly recommend universities to follow suit and many are.

Why won’t we see regional restrictions?

Estonia has ten counties where the infection rate is over 500 per 100,000 residents, a few where it is 400-500 and a single county where it is below 400. Introducing regional exceptions in such as situation would be rather peculiar.

Head of the Tartu University Hospital’s crisis committee Dr. Joel Starkopf said that restrictions are unavoidable in the current situation, while Estonia’s approach remains relatively relaxed. How to find the golden mean here?

Closing society comes with a very high price and can only be temporary. Looking at other countries, some are busy addressing the third wave after being forced to relax temporarily strict measures. We cannot simply keep society and economy locked down so to speak and keep it going using loan money. We also need to keep in mind that healthcare, education and all other walks of life need to remain functional in order for people to be safe and healthy. These kinds of blanket closures have a lot of invisible victims.

Did our experience with tougher measures prove their effectiveness or will people just ignore them with it making no difference how tough restrictions are if there is no control over compliance?

Most people observe and comply with the rules. But there will always be a part of society that will try to circumvent them. This means we need to render monitoring more effective, find the places where rules are broken and concentrate on them. The Health Board and the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA) are in charge. Positive civil vigilance is also welcome here. While I’m not urging people to lodge complaints, we would do well to notice these situations to make sure everyone observes the rules and behaves sensibly.

Does the state have the resources required to monitor the entire situation?

It is unthinkable to contribute all our resources toward making sure everyone wears a mask or complies with the 2+2 rule while forgetting about traffic control, severe crime and domestic violence. We need to disperse our resources and make sure institutions have additional funding for patrols.

And will they?

They have so far and we will be applying for additional resources moving forward.

Why is vaccination progressing so slowly?

The pace of vaccination depends primarily on how much vaccine arrives in the country. There have been weeks where we have vaccinated more people than we received doses for by tapping into our reserves. This has created a situation where the Health Board’s warehouse has been short on the vaccine. Recent AstraZeneca vaccine deliveries have allowed us to ramp up vaccination. It took quite a lot of work to launch vaccination of front-line staff last week in terms of logistics and organization. We initially planned to start vaccination of front-line workers in late February, early March. We had to move up the entire process. The pace of vaccination is growing daily. Today marked a new record and I’m quite sure we will see new records this week. We will vaccinate more people this week than we did last week when we inoculated 15,000 people.

How closely has the government kept in touch with Finnish colleagues and are you nearing a solution in terms of cross-border traffic?

We have all talked to our colleagues, on the level of health ministers, foreign ministers and prime ministers. An area where Estonia can improve is mutual recognition of test results, while we have also offered to test people the Finnish state requires to have a negative test result before they are allowed to enter the country. However, we can only expect borders to be opened completely once Estonia’s case rate drops. The difference with Finland is just too big today.

Therefore, it is likely that Finland will extend the border closure?

I would not speculate. It is clear every country behaves first and foremost based on the interests of its citizens. Finland’s figures are among the best in Europe. Finland has managed the crisis very well and deserves to be commended. Estonia managed a top place in summer and fall, while we know today that our more relaxed approach has resulted in a higher case rate.

Do you also have a positive message for the people?

Absolutely. Talking about vaccination progress, by Thursday evening, we had administered the first dose of vaccine to more people than have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the last 12 months. We also know that vaccination volumes and deliveries are growing very quickly. We received fewer than 10,000 doses of vaccine in December, 42,000 in January, while we expect to take delivery of 115,000 doses in February and 200,000 in March.