Ministry of Health introduces 5-tier plan for managing COVID-19 resurgence

The Czech Ministry of Health on Friday presented a new five-tier plan to manage the coronavirus resurgence in the country, Health Minister Jan Blatny announced during a press conference.

This new plan will assess the general risk in the country, as well as specific regions, and have certain public health measures outlined for each of the five levels of severity. The first risk assessment will be published by the Ministry of Health on Nov. 16.

Right now the country is at the highest level, but could go down to a slightly lower severity by next week, the health minister noted.

According to an estimate by the Institute of Health Information and Statistics, the ‘R’ reproduction rate of the virus’ spread in the country is somewhere between 0.7 and 0.8, indicating a decline in its spread.

On Thursday, the country reported 7,874 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, a steep decline from 15,727 reported on Nov. 4, according to Health Ministry data released on Friday.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, countries including France, Germany, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States are racing to find a vaccine.

According to the website of the World Health Organization, as of Nov. 12, there were 212 COVID-19 candidate vaccines being developed worldwide, and 48 of them were in clinical trials.