Czech Republic reports 13,934 new COVID-19 cases

There were another 13,934 cases of covid-19 on Tuesday, about 1,400 less than on the same day last week. Since the first confirmed cases in early March last year, more than 1.4 million people have been shown to have been infected with coronavirus, and more than 1.2 million have been cured.

So far, 23,902 people have died with covid in the Czech Republic, and more than 200 infected people have died almost every day recently. This year, more people have died with coronavirus than last year – last year, the statistics show 11,940 deaths, and since the beginning of this year, there have been 11,962 deaths so far.

After this weekend, there were 9,401 patients with covid-19 in hospitals, of which 2,045 had a severe disease course. Both data are still the highest in more than a year of coronavirus epidemic in the Czech Republic. On Tuesday, the number of hospitalizations decreased to 9,006. According to current data from the Ministry of Health, 2,016 patients were in serious condition. Due to the disease’s enormous burden, the government does not intend to loosen anti-epidemic measures in the coming weeks significantly.

The reproduction number indicating the average number of other people who become infected with one positive test remains just below one. To date, it has increased from 0.94 to 0.97. If the number rises above one, the epidemic accelerates.

The epidemic has spread the most in recent days in the Jablonec, Jindřichův Hradec, and Mladá Boleslav regions, where more than a thousand new cases per 100,000 inhabitants have increased in the last week.

Laboratories performed more than 155,000 tests for the presence of covid-19 on Tuesday, of which about 120,000 were antigenic, which are less sensitive than PCR tests. In a week-on-week comparison, there were 21,000 fewer tests. Almost 37 percent of all samples were positive, virtually the same as a week ago. In the previous two days, this proportion was below 30 percent. The so-called seven-day moving average is around 33 percent.

On Tuesday, medics administered 43,670 doses of covid vaccine, which is about 2,400 more than a week ago. In total, almost 1.7 million doses of vaccines have been administered in the Czech Republic of more than ten million since the beginning of vaccination last December, while 318,671 people have both required doses. Nearly 80 percent of the vaccines administered so far are from Pfizer / BioNTech, over 12 percent from AstraZeneca, and less than eight percent from Moderna. The Czechia will continue to vaccinate with the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, in recent days some countries have suspended vaccination with this vaccine due to blood clots in those vaccinated. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) convened an extraordinary meeting on Thursday to issue the vaccine’s opinion.

The PES epidemic risk index remains at 71 points on the fourth day, which corresponds to the fourth of the five alert levels. Compared to the previous day, the reproductive number increased by about three hundredths. The other three indicators for calculating the score improved slightly – the average number of infected per 100,000 inhabitants in two weeks, the fortnightly average of infected among seniors, and the proportion of hospitalized for whom covid-19 hospitals.

Initially, the index was supposed to follow measures against the disease’s spread, but now its value is no longer relevant. The primary indicator for the government is the occupancy of hospitals. According to recent ministers, it will be possible to relax restrictions when the number of hospitalized drops to about three thousand, a third of the current situation. In addition to restrictions, continued vaccination should improve the epidemic situation.