The day started to the tune of violins and milking in the village of Meeri in Tartu County. The locals, who had gathered at the village square, wanted to show how good it is to live in Meeri. Just a few decades ago, the village lacked a single blacktop road and children had to hike through the mud for several kilometers to get to school. An active community has turned life around in the village by now.

"The local government, friends and state officials can help you with things you cannot do yourself, but everything has been done one way or another. Because the place I moved to and what we have here today are night and day," local resident Külli Rüütli said.

Meeri village society head Anneli Saaroja said the village offers plenty of opportunities. "People can help the village society, undertake exciting joint projects, with everything one needs just around the corner," she said.

That is the reason Angelina Tomilina returned to Meeri after traveling the world for several decades.

"I have lived in the city. The noise of traffic and all the busy people there. Here, you can enjoy things, just be. I have a million-dollar view and can just step out to look at the Milky Way far above my house. It is brilliant!" Tomilina said.

Nõo Municipality is participating for the third time. Unlike in many other local governments, people there could also get an overview of available real estate on Saturday.

"People come to ask about education opportunities, whether they can send their kids to school or kindergarten here," said Liia Sirel, organizer of the Living in the Country Day in Nõo.

"Some people have come up to us and said they want to move to the municipality. That they have been doing research and now wanted to see the place with their own eyes," second organizer Ene Mölter said.

Organizers of the Living in the Country Day said that two trends have clearly surfaced in the last year – people looking for properties they could turn into a permanent place of residence in the future and ask about the possibilities of working remotely, which is something rural municipalities can facilitate.

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182 people hospitalized with coronavirus

As of Sunday morning, hospitals are treating 149 people for symptomatic COVID-19. In all, hospitals have 182 people with the coronavirus of whom 129 or 70.9 percent are unvaccinated and 53 or 29.1 percent have completed their immunization cycle.

Hospitals opened 19 new treatment cases in the last 24 hours. One person, a 77-year-old woman, died.

Test results analyzed in the last 24 hours numbered 4,473 of which 465 returned positive. Of those, 339 were for unvaccinated people and 126 for fully immunized people.

A total of 3,468 doses of vaccine were administered, putting the total at 1,357,961 doses. Adult vaccination coverage with at least one dose is now 66.7 percent.

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