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| - Finland's health authorities on Monday called on fans returning from European championship matches in St Petersburg to urgently seek testing after 300 of them proved positive for Covid-19. Last week Prime Minister Sanna Marin and top public health officials expressed alarm after testing staff at the Nordic country's Russian border were overwhelmed by the arrival of some 3,000 fans, coming home after Finland was knocked out of the tournament by Belgium. Around 800 Finnish travellers, particularly those arriving by coach, were let into the country without testing and without a formal order to quarantine. "Almost 300 coronavirus infections have been detected among Finnish travellers returning from St Petersburg," public health body THL said in a statement on Monday, recommending fans quarantine themselves for at least 72 hours until they receive a negative result. St Petersburg, one of the Euro host cities, has been particularly hard hit by the more infectious Delta variant of the virus, and has an incidence rate 20 times that of Finland, THL said last week. On Monday Helsinki Mayor Jan Vapaavuori told a press conference that hopes of lifting further restrictions would now have to be put on hold, in part because of the spike in infections from the tournament. "There are so many infections," Vapaavuori said, adding: "The situation is clearly different from what it was a week ago." Kristiina Poikajarvi, of the South Savo regional administrative agency which is in charge of the border area, told newspaper Helsingin Sanomat that "some tourists won't for example answer their phone to the contact tracers, and are just carrying on their lives as normal." On Monday the Nordic country of 5.5 million reported a total of 95,168 coronavirus infections, 1,184 of them in the last week, and just under 1,000 deaths overall. sgk/map/tgb
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