Al Jazeera News :
“I may have gotten carried away,” Czech PM Andrej Babis, a populist billionaire, said in a televised speech on September 21, as he admitted easing coronavirus restrictions too early in the summer.
On the same day, hours earlier, Babis had made the sudden decision to replace his health minister, Adam Vojtech.
With more than 81,000 cases in the Czech Republic, a country of 10.5 million people, the rate of the virus’s spread is among the worst in Europe – almost as severe as in Spain.
On Friday, the country recorded 3,793 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily count since the pandemic hit.
Roman Prymula, the new health minister, has said daily infection rates are among “the worst in the world” – far higher than in the spring, at the peak of the global outbreak.
On Monday, a new state of emergency gets under way in an attempt to contain the virus.
It will last at least 30 days and enforce strict physical distancing by, for instance, closing secondary schools in areas with a large number of infections, banning spectators from sports events and limiting the number of people attending weddings.
“The situation is far out of our control, there is communal spread, we are not managing to track and trace, and hospitals will soon reach their limits,” Jan Paces, a virologist from the Czech Academy of Sciences, told Al Jazeera.
The current race to stem the second wave is in stark contrast to the country’s widely praised handling of the epidemic in March this year, when the government declared a state of emergency before the first COVID-19 death had been registered.
“By being strict from the beginning, we made it through the spring without any breakdowns to the healthcare system,” Vojtech, the former health minister, told Al Jazeera.
At the end of June, as Czechs held a COVID-19 farewell party on Charles Bridge in Prague, the country had only 12,000 registered infections.
“I may have gotten carried away,” Czech PM Andrej Babis, a populist billionaire, said in a televised speech on September 21, as he admitted easing coronavirus restrictions too early in the summer.
On the same day, hours earlier, Babis had made the sudden decision to replace his health minister, Adam Vojtech.
With more than 81,000 cases in the Czech Republic, a country of 10.5 million people, the rate of the virus’s spread is among the worst in Europe – almost as severe as in Spain.
On Friday, the country recorded 3,793 new coronavirus cases, the highest daily count since the pandemic hit.
Roman Prymula, the new health minister, has said daily infection rates are among “the worst in the world” – far higher than in the spring, at the peak of the global outbreak.
On Monday, a new state of emergency gets under way in an attempt to contain the virus.
It will last at least 30 days and enforce strict physical distancing by, for instance, closing secondary schools in areas with a large number of infections, banning spectators from sports events and limiting the number of people attending weddings.
“The situation is far out of our control, there is communal spread, we are not managing to track and trace, and hospitals will soon reach their limits,” Jan Paces, a virologist from the Czech Academy of Sciences, told Al Jazeera.
The current race to stem the second wave is in stark contrast to the country’s widely praised handling of the epidemic in March this year, when the government declared a state of emergency before the first COVID-19 death had been registered.
“By being strict from the beginning, we made it through the spring without any breakdowns to the healthcare system,” Vojtech, the former health minister, told Al Jazeera.
At the end of June, as Czechs held a COVID-19 farewell party on Charles Bridge in Prague, the country had only 12,000 registered infections.
