Czech COVID-19 vaccinations begin with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš

COVID-19 vaccinations have begun in the Czech Republic, with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and war veteran Emilie Řepíková receiving the country's first doses at the Central Military Hospital (UVN) in Prague today.

An additional three hospitals in Prague and two in Brno now have the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, so far the only one registered for use in the EU.

Before the vaccination started, Babiš said that the vaccine represented hope for a return to normal life after the worst year in modern history.

He said the Czech Republic has made another agreement with Pfizer in which it will receive an additional four million doses of the vaccine, for a total of eight million doses from the company.

In total, the Czech Republic will receive 15.9 million vaccines for 8.95 million people from four different companies, Babiš said. He added that he anticipates the vaccination to take place over the next nine months.

In most Czech regions, the PES score has now fallen within the fourth degree range, while the country entered the fifth level of restrictions on Sunday. It is still lowest in Prague at 61 points, on the lower border of the fourth degree. It is the highest, 80, in the Hradec Králové Region.

Ladislav Dušek, the director of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics (ÚZIS), said the data for Christmas holidays were not representative. Generally, only people with symptoms and those sent there by a doctor were tested during this time.

On Saturday, there were another 3,024 COVID-19 cases, several hundred more than on Friday. The proportion of positive cases rose from 34.4 to 36.3 percent.

The number of tests conducted greatly decreased over the holidays. On Wednesday, there were over 39,000 of them, but on Christmas Eve just over 10,000 and over the next two days about 8,000.

Since the March outbreak, there have been about 671,000 known COVID-19 cases. Right now, there are about 94,000 known cases, with about 4.5 percent of them hospitalized. The number of hospitalizations slightly rose to 4,226, with 637 in a serious condition.

The total number of COVID-19-related deaths now stands at over 11,000.