Czech Republic adds record 4,457 new COVID-19 cases

New daily coronavirus cases in the Czech Republic reached a record of 4,457 on Tuesday, breaking the record set Friday by 700 cases. According to the Ministry of Health, since the beginning of the epidemic in March, more than 90,000 cases of the disease have been confirmed. There were also an additional 13 deaths of coronavirus-infected people on Tuesday to a total of 794.

More than half of those infected have already recovered from the disease. There are 40,440 people currently suffering from COVID-19. In most patients, COVID-19 has a mild course, with about 3.8 percent of patients now in hospitals.

However, the number of hospitalizations has been multiplying recently. According to the latest data from the ministry, the number of people with COVID-19 in hospitals has risen by two thirds to 1,387 since Monday alone. The number of hospitalized people in serious condition has increased sharply by three quarters to 326.

A similar jump in recent weeks has also occurred in the number of deaths from coronavirus infections. Since the beginning of last week alone, the number of deaths has increased by more than a quarter to almost eight hundred on Tuesday.

The share of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the number of tests performed has also increased significantly in recent days. It reached a record of 23.74 percent on Sunday. It fell to 17.77 percent on Monday, but it was the second-largest share of those infected since the beginning of the epidemic despite the decline.

The higher share of positive tests is due to a decrease in regional hygienic stations’ tracing of contacts. Marián Hajdúch, director of the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine, leads the Ministry of Health’s laboratory group, wrote on Twitter on Monday. According to him, more people than hygienists are sent for tests by general practitioners, who look for the infection due to the disease’s beginning symptoms. According to the Institute of Health Information and Statistics, Ladislav Dušek, the higher proportion of those infected in the number of tests is also due to the decrease in self-paying tests.

Most COVID-19 is now spreading in the Uherské Hradiště region, where about 392 new cases of the disease per 100,000 inhabitants have appeared in the last seven days. More than three hundred new infections per week were also recorded in the Náchod and Liberec regions, where about 306 cases of the disease per 100,000 inhabitants occurred.

In Prague, the number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday reached a record 856. The previous highest daily increase from September 17 was almost a hundred cases lower. Since March 1, when the first cases of coronavirus infection appeared in the Czech Republic, 19,633 infections have been recorded in Prague. Of the total number of people infected in Prague since the beginning of the epidemic, more than half have recovered.

The overall growth rate of COVID-19 in the Czech Republic is accelerating significantly. While the limit of the first 10,000 patients fell 3.5 months after the onset of the epidemic, another 10,000 increased in just two months. It took only three weeks to reach the limit of 30,000 proven diseases, and now the number of infected is growing in the thousands. For the last 10,000 confirmed cases, three days were enough.