Czech Health Minister Vlastimil Valek wants almost all anti-COVID restrictions to be lifted by April 1 at the latest, he told a press conference yesterday.
He added that he plans to submit a proposal of a gradual relaxation of the measures to the cabinet meeting next week.
Valek said he would like people in the Czech Republic to be able to spend Easter, which falls in mid-April this year, in a way they were used to before the March 2020 coronavirus epidemic outburst.
The end of mandatory blanket testing
Mandatory blanket testing in schools, companies, and institutions ended yesterday, February 18.
All company employees have been tested twice a week while schoolchildren and all school employees have been tested once a week since Jan. 17.
The highest numbers of positive tests were registered in the week between January and February, with almost 49,000 cases.
The state will contribute 60 crowns to the cost of testing for each employee four times a month.
Latest statistics
13,774 new cases of Covid-19 were registered in the Czech Republic on Friday, the lowest figure for a weekday in five weeks. There were also over 2,500 confirmed new reinfections.
Both figures were down by around a third on the previous Friday, though fewer tests were conducted.
The seven-day case incidence rate on Friday was 1,048 per 100,000, the lowest number saw for a month.
Over 3,500 people were hospitalized with the coronavirus.
