Walk-in vaccination centers to open in Brno and Ostrava

Coivd-19 vaccination centers for people without previous registration will open in Ostrava and Brno on Wednesday, PM Andrej Babiš has announced. The centers will open in the Karolina and Olympia shopping centers and be and run by the Ostrava Teaching Hospital and Brno's St. Ann Teaching Hospital, respectively.

Babiš spoke to the media while receiving additional vaccines lent to the Czech Republic by Hungary.

The first two walk-in centers where people can turn up without booking a time slot opened in Prague's Chodov shopping mall and Main Train Station earlier this week.

In Brno, visitors will be able to choose from two types of vaccines, either the two-dose Pfizer or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

"The centers will operate daily, including weekends, from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. We may modify the opening hours depending on interest," St. Ann hospital spokeswoman Dana Lipovská told CTK.

In Ostrava, the vaccination centre will operate daily from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Health Minister Adam Vojtěch tweeted, adding that the center will use the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The Brno and the Ostrava centers will each have a daily capacity of around 800 people.

In Prague, people have shown high interest in the new centers for those who did not previously book a vaccination time. During this week, the centers saw lines of up to 150-meters long, with vaccination-seekers waiting for more than two hours.

About 900 people were vaccinated in the Chodov center in Prague on Thursday, and 445 in the center at the Main Train Station, Vojtěch wrote.

Babiš said both Prague centers are working perfectly, and that a third center will open in Prague on Sunday in the Nový Smíchov shopping mall.

Walk-in vaccination sites will also open in the Plzeň Region, and are being considered by the Zlín Region.

Babiš said that health insurance companies have sent letters of urgency to people who have not yet sought vaccination. He admitted that these people may include some who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons.

It is up to the Health Ministry to specify the treatment of people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies, Babiš added.

Additionally, the Health Ministry should recommend whether a third vaccine dose against Covid-19 should be administered, and to what groups of the population. Talks have mentioned patients after transplant surgeries and chronically ill people as those eligible for a third dose.

Covid-19 vaccination began in the Czech Republic in late December, 2020. Until earlier this week, people had to register in advance, which is no longer the case in the new centers in Prague and those which will open in Ostrava and Brno next week.

Among the Czech Republic's 10.7 million residents, over nine million vaccine doses have been administered so far, with 4.1 million people completing their vaccination.