As the number of Covid cases dropped, bars and restaurants reopened, and summer festivals began, many people felt free to enjoy something more than a normal summer.
But now as a feature Helsingin Sanomat on Thursday reports that coronavirus infection chains caused by the return to social life threaten the contact tracing process.
"Where there are a lot of people, a stranger cannot name another guest as unknown," Eeva Ruotsalainen, Helsinki and Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS), said HS.
Local officials in Vantaa told the newspaper that their resources were running low. Timo Aronkytö, the city’s deputy mayor for social and health care told the newspaper that tracking now requires resources "which are not available".
"Now the queue is so long that we can no longer contact the exposed in a timely manner. Now we contact them in 5-8 days — and then the infected ones are already sick," he said.
The Communicable Diseases Act obliges municipalities to trace people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus, but Vantaa’s Aronkytö told HS that with the current volumes, procedures need to be changed – in the future he wants to transfer more responsibility to individuals.
"When people get sick, they tell people in the workplace and elsewhere. The individual needs the support of bureaucracy, but the responsibility for controlling the disease passes to the individual," he said.
Finnish guards on the Belarusian-Russian border
Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat reports from Lithuania, in which Finnish border guards participate in the so – called "rapid border intervention" On the EU border with Belarus.
Finland participates with 17 other countries "unauthorized" Border crossings have increased in recent months – according to the paper Belarus Belarus leader deliberate policy Alexander Lukashenko to "weapons" illegal migration.
In response, Lithuania has introduced a controversial new law that sees the authorities "fast route" migrants back to Belarus. As a general rule, asylum seekers are allowed to present their case before they may be expelled.
This puts Finland’s representatives in a difficult situation, IS reports. "We cannot participate in the implementation of this new law. We can only look at the page and report what we see, but rapid monitoring is not part of Frontex’s mandate," A border guard named Ahonen told the newspaper.
In response, the EU border agency Frontex told IS that it was not responsible for the political decisions taken by the Member States.
Local campaign on train safety
Pirkanmaa local Aamulehti reports on Tweet regular train traffic, which sparked a debate about safety in VR services, which do not always have staff to assist.
In July Julia Sangervo, a regular passenger on the R commuter train, which operates on the Helsinki-Tampere route, tweeted about the event in the evening traffic.
"VR’s trains are felt unsafe. Just today drunken, unrevealed man tried to touch me and behaved threateningly throughout the journey. There was not any conductor or any way to contact them," he said.
According to Aamulehti, he was accompanied by others who had experienced similar situations on the R train, which covers the distance between the two cities in about two hours.
In response to Aamulehti’s questions, VR director Topi Simola told the newspaper that he understood that reports of late-night events had decreased.
"This does not mean that every trip is uninterrupted for passengers. I’m not really saying that" he told the magazine.
Simola also told Aamulehti that although the company did not place staff on the trains at all times of the day, it had decided to take the conductors of the R train an hour earlier.