“It has now been proposed to extend [the lockdown] until the end of June, but we will have to wait for the government’s decision”, Saulius Skvernelis told the reporters at the parliament on Tuesday.

The maintenance of lockdown regime now had more to do with legal aspects than with medical aspects, he pointed out.

“As regards the extension of the lockdown, this is in fact related to the legal regime, which primarily has two aims – economic support, given that there are many measures applied during the lockdown and thereafter, as well as the containment of the disease and prevention of its import,” Skvernelis said.

The Cabinet also planned to approve epidemiological criteria for keeping the lockdown in place, he added.

The epidemiologists had proposed four criteria, which, once met, would enable the government to lift the lockdown, prime minister said.

In line with those criteria, the lockdown would be lifted if there were no increase in the cumulative 14-day incidence rate of COVID-19 per 100,000 population, if the rate of positive cases did not exceed 0.5 percent of all samples tested, if COVID-19 imports did not exceed five cases per week and if at least 90 percent of new cases were related to existing local hotspots.

The government would approve further easing of lockdown restrictions on Wednesday, Skvernelis said.

“Once we adopt the decision tomorrow, we will see that we are in fact going back to our previous usual life, except for those restrictions related to individual hotspots or the spread of the disease,” he noted.

The nationwide lockdown was imposed in Lithuania on March 16.

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