Travelers from the United States wishing to enter Lithuania will face stricter quarantine rules, while those coming from Spain and Portugal will go through an easier procedure of entry, Lithuania’s Ministry of Health has announced.

The decision comes after the authorities have evaluated that the infection rate in these countries and the way that the new strains of the Coronavirus pandemic have affected them, StudyinPoland.Info reports.

According to the ministry’s statement, the changes will be put in place starting next month (March 1).

“Lighter isolation conditions will apply from Monday to those arriving from Spain and Portugal, and stricter from the United States,” the statement reads.

All persons planning to go out of the country must provide information to the National Public Health Center (NVSC) by filling a form.

Last week, Lithuania authorities announced that they added some other countries to the list of affected states, in which the Coronavirus pandemic is not under control.

According to the announcement, Lithuania added Albania, the Republic of Seychelles, the Kingdom of Bahrain,  and Slovakia, to its COVID-19 high-risk list, in which all travel should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Arrivals from these countries will also follow tighter quarantine rules upon their arrival.

However, on February 8, Lithuania decided to place all countries worldwide on its list of affected countries after taking into account the rapid spread of new strains of the Coronavirus pandemic in other countries.

Still, the good news was that the quarantine period would no longer be 14 days, as the Ministry of Health decided to shorten it to 10 days for all persons wishing to enter Lithuania’s territory. However, the ministry clarified that from February 8, all travelers would be obliged to present a negative result of the Coronavirus test, not older than 48 hours.

Once the year-end holidays ended, Lithuania’s government announced that it would impose stricter preventive measures in order to stop the spread of the virus, including obliging travelers to show a negative test result upon their arrival, not older than 48 hours.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has ranked Lithuania in the 15th place regarding the two weeks COVID-19 case notification rate of the Coronavirus pandemic among the European countries and the 9th place regarding the two weeks death notification rate.

Lithuania has registered 197,343 cases of infections from the COVID-19, and 3,234 persons have died, according to the statistics published by Worldometers.