THIS STORY WAS UPDATED
After MTV broke a story about coronavirus infections at the Luona-managed Nihtisilta reception center in Espoo, Migrant Tales got confirmation Wednesday from the company that there are two infected asylum seekers with coronavirus.
We had reported Tuesday, citing a source at the reception center, that the possible number of infected asylum seekers could number 7-10.
Migrant Tales got in touch with Luona’s Business Director Suvi Salonen, who did not return our call or answer our email concerning the number of infected asylum seekers.
Some measures taken by the asylum reception center is that none of the residents eat together in the cafeteria. Contrary to the infected residents, whose food is brought to them, each person gets his food from the cafeteria and eats it in his room.
The Nihtisilta reception center is bursting with trash.
A Migrant Tales story last week asked why the government has been issuing social distancing recommendations to avoid crowded environments, but these guidelines did not apply to reception centers. Why hadn’t they taken steps to make such camps less crowded?
Ahti Tolvanen wrote: “The problem has been noticed and measures taken in other countries but not in Finland. In Greece, two refugee reception centers were recently placed under special quarantine restrictions…Portugal has taken a more proactive measure by issuing temporary resident permits to all asylum seekers until the summer to allow them to try and find safe work and accommodations and to escape high-risk institutionalization.”