Czech Republic reports 10,883 new coronavirus cases

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Czech Republic again exceeded ten thousand. Still, in the week-on-week comparison, there are fewer infected in the last two weeks. On Tuesday, covid-19 was detected in another 10,883 people, about 3,100 less than last week.

Compared to the previous week, the number of hospitalizations also decreased by about 900.

According to data from the Ministry of Health, there were 8,402 people with covid in hospitals on Tuesday, 1,890 of them in serious condition, according to data on the Ministry of Health website. However, the burden on hospitals and incredibly intensive care units remains enormous. The ministry’s statistics do not include patients who no longer show coronavirus symptoms but still need hospital care. Therefore, the government is not planning a significant easing of restrictions, at least until Easter.

Less than 10,000 confirmed cases of covid on weekdays increased in the Czech Republic on Monday and last Friday. Before that, the daily increase in those infected fell below this limit for the last time on February 15.

So far, almost one and a half million people in the Czech Republic have been demonstrably infected with coronavirus, and nearly 1.3 million of them have recovered in the meantime. Since the beginning of the epidemic last March, 25,258 people have died in the country with coronavirus, and more recently, a thousand deaths have been made in less than a week. According to current data, Czechia has the highest number of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the entire European Union and is the second-largest globally.

On Tuesday, medics gave 36,230 doses of covid vaccine, about 12,000 less than on the same day last week. 1,033,273 people in the Czech Republic received at least one vaccine dose on Tuesday evening; 384,841 people have both needed doses. Minister of Health Jan Blatný (for YES) assumed that this week the number of vaccinations could rise to 60,000 to 70,000 per day. The current maximum of administered doses in one day is just over 52,000 from March 11.

Currently, the infection is most prevalent in the Jindřichův Hradec region, where 772 newly confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants have increased in the last week—followed by the districts of Mladá Boleslav and Česká Lípa, where tests in the last seven days revealed 770 and 759 new cases of infection per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively.

Laboratories in the Czech Republic performed almost 169,000 tests for coronavirus on Tuesday, more than 136,000 by the antigen method. The rest were more reliable PCR tests. Compared to the same day of the previous week, the number of tests performed decreased by 23,500.

The proportion of positive cases detected by preventive testing on Tuesday was 0.89 percent. A week earlier, it was more than one percent. In the so-called diagnostic indication, when people showing symptoms of covid are tested, the proportion of positive tests was about one-third, about two percentage points less than a week ago. In the epidemiological indication of tests, where people are tested, for example, for possible contact with the infected, almost 18 percent of tests were positive on Tuesday.

The epidemic is also slowing down according to the development of the anti-epidemic system of PES, which previously governed measures against the outbreak in the Czech Republic. The PES score has dropped to 59 points today, and for the first time since December 5, it corresponds to the third of five levels of alert. Since then, the system has been in the top two stages. The reproduction number, which shows the spread of the disease in the population, decreased from 0.85 to 0.82. The PES system’s value is no longer relevant for determining anti-epidemic measures in the Czech Republic; the Ministry of Health now mainly monitors the occupancy of hospitals. The authorized head hygienist Pavla Svrčinová was given the task of preparing a new form of the system.