Most people catch COVID-19 from family members, says chief Czech hygienist

Prague, Aug 25 (CTK) – People most often catch COVID-19 from their family members, and the sources of infection are, for example, parties and children’s summer camps, Czech chief public health officer Jarmila Rážová has said.

Additionally, new cases of infection have recently been connected with football teams and weddings.

Government commissioner for digitization and IT Vladimír Dzurilla, from the Smart Quarantine team, told journalists on Monday that there are 106 COVID-19 clusters in the Czech Republic at the moment.

Last Friday, the daily increase in the number of people who tested positive was 506. This was the first day since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country in March that had a daily increase of more than 500.

According to the Smart Quarantine team, the source of the infection is uncovered in more than 70 percent of cases, and they can be then linked to a particular cluster.

The biggest clusters in the Czech Republic to date have been the coal mines in Karviná in Moravia-Silesia, where 516 COVID-19 cases were recorded in connection with the Darkov mine, 819 at the CSM-North mine and 402 at the CSM-South mine. More than 1,200 of the infected were miners and other people working in the mines.

Public health officers linked 250 infection cases, including 192 people from Prague, to the Prague dance and music club Techtle Mechtle where COVID-19 was spread during a party. More than 150 infected people were linked to organised trips to a dance party in the Croatian island of Pag.

“If young people go to parties, they should keep in mind that they will probably have only mild symptoms if they get infected, but somebody close to them may work in a health facility or as a police officer or soldier,” Rážová said.

Dana Černá, from the Central Bohemia regional public health office, said people who test positive usually have at least four or five people who they could have infected, and public health officers then notify these people via telephone.

Černá said the public health officers cannot tell people from whom they may have caught COVID-19, and so they ask the positively tested to call the people they contacted and tell them that they tested positive.

Epidemiologists usually talk with an infected person on the phone for about two hours, and then they talk to those whom they contacted and to the person’s general practitioner.

Petr Šnajdárek, who represents the military in the Smart Quarantine team, said that the administrative work that epidemiologists must do takes about 90 percent of their time, and this time needs to be shortened. For example, the repeated writing down of the same data in separate systems should be eliminated.

Czech regional public health officers have 2,200 employees, but only 300 of them are epidemiologists.

Dzurilla said these epidemiologists can deal with about 600 cases a day now. This could to increased up to 1,500 cases a day, he said.