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The Czech government has laid out new measures it would like to impose in a bid to curb a surge in coronavirus cases.
It plans to ban movement between different districts (with exceptions for travel to work or to look after a relative), to close kindergartens and schools and some of the shops that have hitherto been allowed to open.
The government does not plan to shut down factories and other workplaces but it will subsidise testing at companies.
The quarantine period is to be extended from ten to fourteen days, due to the more contagious variants of the disease.
The new restrictions would come into force n Monday and last for three weeks.
The government is pushing to extend the state of emergency in the country by another 30 days and has been negotiating with the opposition in order to win support for a stricter lockdown. The lower house is to vote on the government’s proposal on Friday.
The current state of emergency will expire on February 28, and it was originally to have been replaced by a law on pandemics approved in a fast-track legislation process, but the government says it is not sufficient to deal with the present emergency.
In connection with the spread of more aggressive mutations of the coronavirus, the Czech government has banned Czech citizens and foreigners residing in the Czech Republic from travelling to countries with an extreme risk of these mutations as of February 26.
The list of extreme-risk states include Botswana, Brazil, Swaziland, South Africa, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania (including Zanzibar and Pemba), Zambia and Zimbabwe.
In the event of urgent trips which cannot be postponed travellers are obliged to notify the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic about their trip via the ministry’s database DROZD. Violations of this measure will be sanctioned under the Public Health Protection Act.
The number of Covid patients in a serious conditions reached a new high at 1,531 on Friday morning, according to data released by the Czech Health Ministry.
The number of newly detected cases continues to rise, with 14, 457 cases detected on Thursday, 2,800 more than on the same day last week. The death toll is now close to 20,000.
The first cases of the South African mutation were officially confirmed in the Czech Republic on Thursday. The more contagious British mutation is now dominant in many parts of the country.
Teachers will be able to start registering for a Covid vaccine from Saturday, February 27, Health Minister Jan Blatny confirmed at a press briefing on Friday.People aged over 70 will be able to start registering as of Monday, March 1st.The start of registration for these two groups was set two days apart to prevent the system from collapsing.
Over 3,000 GPs are due to get involved in the process of vaccination as of Monday, although some of them say they are still waiting for vaccines and needles.
624,000 health workers and people over 80 have been vaccinated to date, of which 233,000 have received both doses.
The coronavirus drug bamlanivimab, which helps high-risk patients to avoid developing complications, has been administered to the first patient in the Czech Republic.
The woman, who was treated in Prague’s Thomayerova hospital, was released from hospital soon after. The hospital has 500 doses of the drug at it disposal.
Prime Minister Andrej Babiš on Friday criticized the government’s expert group for being too cautious in recommending the purchase of drugs such as bamlanivimab or regeneron.
He said the Czech Republic has been offered 10,500 doses of bamlanivimab and had only acquired 2,500. It is expecting 4,000 doses of the drug regeneron in the coming days.
Justice Minister Marie Benešová has turned to the Supreme Court with a complaint regarding the severity of a verdict for a petty theft.
The complaint refers to the case of a homeless man who was sentenced to two years in prison for the theft of five bread rolls.
The man appealed and his sentence was lowered to 1.5 years in jail. The exceptional punishment was due to the state of emergency in place at the time of the theft.
The defence argued that the homeless man had been driven by hunger and had not been looting, but the argument was not taken into consideration.
Slavia Prague have caused a sensation in the round of 32 in football’s Europa League, after beating Leicester City, who are near the top of the English Premier League on Thursday night. The Czech champions scored two goals in the second half from Lukáš Provod and Abdallah Sima at Leicester’s King Power Stadium for a 2:0 victory on the night and the same score on aggregate in the two-legged tie in the competition’s round of 32.
Saturday should bring partly cloudy skies with day temperatures between 4 and 9 degrees Celsius.
A year into the coronavirus pandemic, the Czech Republic has a higher per capita death toll than any other EU country. The nation is on the verge of another lockdown as cases soar, including of new, more aggressive mutations. Cardinal Dominika Duka recently spoke to Czech Radio about the fear, frustration and fatigue gripping the nation.
The Czech Republic’s annual Muriel Award for best comic book of the year was given to the graphic novel Bez vlasů or Without Hair. The autobiographical novel is a joint endeavour by writer Tereza Drahoňovská and Štěpánka Jislová and describes the struggles of living with alopecia, an autoimmune disease causing hair loss.
Sales of audiobooks in the Czech Republic continue to grow. In 2020, sales of audiobooks reached nearly CZK 230 million, an increase of over 12 percent on the previous year, suggest the newly published data by the Audiobook Publishers Association.
No Night So Dark is a new radio series set to premiere this Saturday. Spanning altogether 150 years, it tells the story of the Wels family, which lived in Western Bohemia and later Prague. Their past has since been brought back into memory thanks to the discovery of their archives, which shed remarkable light on what life was like in a Czech-Jewish family during the interwar period. To find out more, I spoke to the series creator David Vaughan, who has played an instrumental role in retelling the Wels family story through several formats. I began by asking him what format he chose for the seven part series.
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