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Pavel Burian

December 31, 2020 Politics

Czech Republic reports record COVID-19 cases

Czech Republic reports record COVID-19 cases - Czech Points

Laboratories detected 16,939 cases of coronavirus in the Czech Republic on Wednesday. On the second day in a row, the current daily maximum was exceeded. Almost 52 percent of the tests were positive, which is also a record percentage. Nearly 5,900 people are hospitalized with covid-19, about 200 more than on Wednesday. 845 of them are in serious condition. So far, 11,580 people have died from the disease, according to the Ministry of Health. The PES risk score remains at 80 points and is in the highest fifth level of alertness on the second day.

Since the beginning of the epidemic in March, coronavirus in the Czech Republic has been confirmed in 718,661 people. More than 592,000 of them have recovered from the disease. There are currently 114,500 infected in the country, the most since early November.

Recently, the number of deaths with covid-19 has begun to increase again. At the beginning of November, more than 200 people died daily, then the numbers started to decline, and at the beginning of December, they mostly remained below one hundred. However, from last Wednesday to Tuesday, there were again at least one hundred deaths every day, with 75 casualties on Wednesday. However, this data usually increases with further updates.

The number of hospitalized is also evolving. At the beginning of November, there were more than 8,000 of them. In December this number dropped by about half. On Christmas Day, there were about 4,300 people in hospitals with covid, but then the number of patients increased. As a result, hospitals are no longer allowed to admit patients for scheduled procedures that can be postponed. It must also increase the capacity of patients with covid-19. Minister of Health Jan Blatný considers the increase in hospitalizations to be serious. “The first week in January will be decisive,” he said on Wednesday.

Laboratories performed 32,600 tests on Wednesday, about 3,000 less than on Tuesday. There were significantly fewer tests on the holidays, but there were almost 42,000 tests in one day before Christmas Day.

The worst situation is currently in the Hradec Králové Region, where in the past seven days, there have been about 878 infected people per 100,000 inhabitants. In the Opava region, it was 847 cases, and in the Rychnov region, 821 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. The relatively best situation was in the Chomutov region, with 219 cases per 100,000 inhabitants last week.

Vaccination could improve the situation in the country. Other doses of covid-19 vaccine arrived in the Czech Republic on Wednesday and have already reached all regions. Some regional hospitals have already started vaccinating paramedics. According to the vaccination strategy, hospitalized seniors, doctors, or people in nursing homes also have priority over the general population. Among the priority, groups will also be all teachers, including those from kindergartens and special schools.

The covid-19 epidemic risk index in the Czech Republic remains at 80 points for the second day. The index in each region is already at the fifth level of alert. Since Wednesday, all indicators according to which the risk score is calculated to have deteriorated. For example, the reproduction number rose from 1.0 to 1.19.