RIGA, Jan 21 (LETA) - Around 4,000 clients of Latvia's nursing homes, or nearly a third of the 13,000 people residing in the long-term care facilities, have contracted Covid-19 and 146 of them have died since the start of the pandemic, Ir magazine reports today, citing information from the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC). 

The virus has also stricken 1,300 of the nursing homes' employees - physicians, orderlies, medical nurses and others.

Some of the nursing homes became coronavirus hotbeds already in the summer. For instance, the virus sickened more than half of residents at the Marsneni nursing home. Although the strict safety measures that were introduced at such facilities should have kept prevented such scenarios from repeating, the coronavirus found its way into more nursing homes, the magazine says.

By the beginning of this week, Covid-19 had affected 80 nursing homes in Latvia, including 13 state-run and 67 municipal and private facilities. According to CDC's data, infections detected at nursing homes make up 10.4 percent of all Covid-19 cases reported in Latvia, says Aldis Dudins, directior of the Welfare Ministry's social services department. 

Covid-19 incidence at Latvia's nursing homes surged in the fall, growing 50 times from October to December - from 66 to 3,184 cases, according to the ministry's data. With the coronavirus continuing to spread in nursing homes, it has already infected over 5,000 clients and employees.