Czech Republic coronavirus updates, Nov. 4: 12,088 new cases, new travel map to take effect next week

There were 12,088 reported COVID-19 cases in the Czech Republic yesterday, according to the latest data from the Czech Health Ministry released this morning.

It's the first time since Saturday that the country reported more than 10,000 new cases.

The Czech Republic remains the second-most-affected state in the EU over the past two weeks, with about 1,586 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, trailing only Belgium (1,753 cases), according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Luxembourg and Slovenia have also reported more than 1,000 cases over the past 14 days.

In the past two weeks, the Czech Republic has reported the most COVID-19-related deaths in Europe at 20 deaths per 100,000 residents.

Over the past seven days, 1,227 COVID-19-related deaths have been reported in the Czech Republic. There have been 149 deaths attributed to Tuesday so far, a number that will rise as additional data comes in.

Since the beginning of the epidemic in March, a total of 3,913 COVID-19 patients have died.

Over that span, a total of 362,985 COVID-19 cases have been reported in the country, with the majority of those cases coming in October.

Currently, there are 173,892 known active cases in the country. Of those, 7,396 are being treated in hospitals, with 1,134 considered to be in serious condition. More than 1,000 patients have required intensive care for the past six days.

Over the past two weeks, more than 30% of those tested in the Czech Republic have been positive for COVID-19, though that number has been slightly decreasing over the past week. On Monday, there were 30,874 tests performed and 9,240 positive cases; the number of tests performed Tuesday will be released later today.

Over the past seven days, the rate of COVID-19 infection has been highest in Náchod, where about 991 cases new cases have been reported per 100,000 inhabitants.

In Prague, there have been 410 new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents over the past seven days, which rates among the lowest figures in the country. Cheb and Breclav have reported the lowest ratio of cases over the past week, at 381 and 330 per 100,000 residents, respectively.

This week, the Czech Foreign Ministry has proposed that the Czech Republic adopt the EU's criteria for assessing COVID-19 infection risk in individual countries as of November 9 so that the travel traffic light system is unified across the EU.

According to the risk levels, the system will assesses countries on a scale of colors from green to red. Based on the planned rules, citizens from "green" states would not face movement restrictions anywhere in the EU.

The recommendation from the Council of the EU has already been adopted by countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Slovenia, Denmark and Finland. To learn more about the new system, which would take effect next week, click here.

Starting today, professional athletes and teams will be allowed to resume training and games under strict conditions, the Czech government announced this week. The move should pave the way for local hockey leagues to resume play.

This week, the Czech COVID-19 reproduction number (R number), which indicates the number of people one infected person will spread the virus to, fell to 1 for the first time since August, according to Data Against COVID.