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The Senate has approved –in its first reading - a bill that would give Czechs abroad postal voting rights in parliamentary and presidential elections. The bill, submitted by fifty senators, will now be debated in the individual Senate committees. If approved the bill would take effect next year.

The Czech Republic is one of the last five EU countries that do not yet have voting by mail. Postal voting would benefit around 600,000 Czechs who live abroad. At present they can only vote at embassies, which is costly and time consuming. Earlier this year Czechs living overseas launched a campaign in support of postal voting, tracking kilometers they have run or walked – to highlight the distances they often have to cover in order to cast their ballot.

The number of athletes on the Czech Olympic team in Tokyo to test positive for Covid-19 has now risen to four. The latest confirmed case involves cyclist Michal Schlegel, whose positive test was announced on Thursday.

He and four other athletes – two beach volleyball players and a table tennis player – were on a special plane to the Olympics last Friday. A doctor on board was the first person to test positive; it later transpired he had not been vaccinated against the coronavirus.  It also reported that most passengers took off their respirators as soon as the plane took off.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has described the situation as a scandal and unfair to the athletes.

Influential Czech businessman Roman Janoušek re-entered prison on Thursday after a court ruled that he was well enough to see out the rest of his sentence. He had previously been released while serving a four-and-a-half-year term, for hit and run, after undergoing brain surgery and on the grounds he had an incurable disease.

At one point on Thursday a missing person alert for Mr. Janoušek was issued. However, he later turned up himself at Prague’s Pankrác prison.

The third and latest Czech athlete confirmed to have Covid-19 is beach volleyball player Markéta Nausch Sluková, who revealed she had tested positive on Thursday. She had been due to compete this coming Saturday but must instead spend 10 days in isolation.

Nausch Sluková’s agent, David Trávníček, told iDnes.cz that the Czech Olympic Committee’s handling of the transport of athletes to Tokyo was a case of “pure amateurism”. Five members of the Czech party have tested positive for the virus since taking a special plane together late last week.