Czech coronavirus outbreak may rise for 30 days, then subside, says top official

Prague, March 17 (CTK) – The coronavirus outbreak will keep spreading for about one month in the Czech Republic and then it will start subsiding, if everybody follows the regulations and restrictions adopted in order to fight the epidemic, Czech Central Crisis Staff head Roman Prymula said today.

“This is an optimistic projection based on that everybody will do what they should and that we will limit the transmission,” he said.

Prymula, an epidemiologist who is a deputy health minister, said he expected the situation in Italy to stop worsening in the next few days because this country introduced so many measures to curb the outbreak. He said he did not mean that the number of Italians who die of COVID-19 a day would start falling this week.

Three people have already recovered from the disease in the Czech Republic, while three other patients are in a very serious condition.

Prymula said not only the Homolka hospital in Prague and the St Anne’s hospital in Brno are getting prepared for coronavirus patients but also the Motol hospital in Prague and the Bohunice hospital in Brno. These hospitals will have beds with ventilators and beds with oxygen, he said.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis said today that the Motol and Homolka hospitals agreed today that they would have 90 beds for serious COVID-19 patients.

Prymula said the number of such beds available in Brno was to be known in two days. He said originally there were to be 150 beds in St Anne’s hospital, but not all of them would have medical ventilators.

Babis said on Monday that the military hospital in Techonin, east Bohemia, with 100 beds needs 12 hours to start operating.