The decision was announced by Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu (Isamaa) who said it was a reasonable decision.

Direct flights from Tallinn to European countries are allowed where the infection rate of coronavirus is no higher than double the average indicator for the European Union reported on the website of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Latvia has a similar system in place.

This means direct flights are allowed to restart to countries with a 14-day average infection rate of 186.8 or less. This currently excludes France (235), Spain (319.9) and Czech Republic (266.9). The infection rate in Estonia is 44.8 as of Tuesday.

Quarantine is still mandatory for people returning from a country which has an infection rate of 16 or higher. This has been lifted to 25 per 100,000 for Latvians, Lithuanians and Finns.

The new regulation lifts the limit from 25 per 100,000 which has proved to be very restrictive and has cut the number of connections Estonia has with Europe in recent months.

The government agreed earlier this summer that flights between Warsaw, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Riga, Helsinki and London will stay open regardless of the infection rate in each country.

Estonia updates its list every Friday and the new regulations enter in to force on Monday. The infection rate for each country this week is below, those over 200 are bolded:

• Andorra 593,3
• Austria 110,6
• Belgium 146,7
• Bulgaria 28,2
• Croatia 65,1
• Czech Republic 243,8
• Cyprus 16,7*
• Denmark 103,2
• Finland 16,5*
• France 213,8
• Germany 28,2
• Greece 38,9
• Hungary 122,1
• Iceland 99,4
• Ireland 74,1
• Italy 35,0
• Latvia 7,6
• Liechtenstein 20,9
• Lithuania 31,2
• Luxembourg 174,3
• Malta 140,4
• Monaco 120,9
• Netherlands 142,3
• Norway 28,7
• Poland 27,3
• Portugal 87,9
• Romania 94,6
• San Marino 69,7
• Slovakia 47,9
• Slovenia 68,6
• Spain 319,7
• Sweden 38,8
• Switzerland 68,9
• United Kingdom 87,4
• Vatican 0,0

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