Czech PES score falls to fourth level as country enters fifth-level restrictions

The Czech Republic's COVID-19 PES index score fell from the highest fifth alert level to the fourth level on Sunday. This was due to a decline in the reproduction number to 0.94, the Czech Health Ministry said today.

The value of the index fell from 76 points on Saturday to 71 on Sunday.

Conversely, lockdown measures were tightened to match the fifth degree today. Under the fifth level of restrictions, most shops and services are closed.

The fall in the PES index score was due to the reproduction number, the average number of people one COVID-19 positive person infects, falling from 1.05 to 0.94.

A reproduction number under one indicates that the epidemic spread is slowing down.

Until today, the PES score was within the fifth level range for nine days in a row.

Should the PES score remain under 76 for seven consecutive days, the country may revert back to the fourth level of restrictions.

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.