The largest COVID-19 vaccination centre in the Czech Republic started its operations on May 3, 2021.
The contract to rent the premises of the O2 Universum was valid until 31. 7. 2021, with the possibility of an extension.
The O2 Universum was repurposed from a concert and sport hall into a vaccination centre over the span of several weeks, with 24 stations set up across 13,000 square meters.
The country, which was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic in earlier waves, has seen low infection rates since the summer months. In the past two weeks, it has reported 25 cases per 100,000 people, compared with 137 in Germany, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said on Tuesday the government was not planning a return to broad lockdown measures – which had been eased going into the summer months – and ministers say local measures could be used in some instances.
Babiš added that the government will also have to prepare its vaccination strategy for the years 2022 and 2023 by October this year, in order to be ready for future mutations of the COVID-19 coronavirus.
The Czech Republic registered 421 new cases of Covid-19 on Thursday, an increase of 44 on the previous day and 116 more than on the same day a week ago.
The number of people hospitalized with Covid has almost doubled in the space of a week, with 109 people now in need of hospital care.
The health authorities have warned that the country is on the brink of a fourth wave of the pandemic and have rolled out a campaign to convince more people to get vaccinated.
The country’s death rate per capita since the pandemic started is the fifth highest in the world, according to Our World in Data, and overall more than 30,000 deaths have been reported.
By the end of August, 63.5% of the adult population had been fully vaccinated.
