The Czech Chamber of Deputies approved of the extension of the State of Emergency till November 20th.
The Government previously proposed to extend the State of Emergency until December 3rd. However, the Chamber of Deputies did not agree and voted to extend it until November 20th – as the Communists and the ODS, for example, requested.
The state of emergency itself does not mean any draconic steps but gives the government more power to limit activities including businesses.
PM Babiš said the government is evaluating the situation on the basis of epidemiological criteria and daily increments.
“The growth of hospitalizations is constantly accelerating and the number of beds is rapidly decreasing. Although on Wednesday and Thursday the statistics show that the pandemic is slowly starting to weaken, data on mobility suggest that still too many people are using public transport and they go shopping more,” he added.
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“We need to slow down the spread of the epidemic as soon as possible, protect our citizens, at-risk groups, and prevent the collapse of hospitals’ capacity. At the same time, we need to reduce the reproduction number R below the value of 1. Only then, we can start considering the gradual relaxation of the current measures.”
Breach of obligations imposed on the basis of the Czech Act on Crisis Management may be penalized for natural persons in relation to its seriousness as an offense with a fine of up to CZK 20,000, CZK 50,000, CZK 100,000, and max. CZK 2,000,000 and legal entities and natural persons doing business up to CZK 3,000,000.
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The Czech Republic reported 13,051 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday. There are 178,578 active cases currently. Deaths have climbed by 187 to 2,862.
The number of hospitalizations has dropped to 6,604, while the number of those in intensive care increased to 1,031.
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